


Embers

by Gwenpools_Aesthetic



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Bottom Matt Murdock, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt Matt Murdock, Identity Porn, Identity Reveal, Idiots in Love, Loss of Powers, M/M, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sam Wilson Is a Good Bro, Top Bucky Barnes, but not really an AU, depressed matt murdock, more like altered reality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:47:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29077326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwenpools_Aesthetic/pseuds/Gwenpools_Aesthetic
Summary: Something was wrong.Matt stopped dead in his tracks. “Sir?” The voice of a security guard called out to him. “Sir, do you need assistance? Mr. Murdock?”Matt raised his right hand and shook his head, quieting the guard. The last thing he needed was more sounds right now. He needed to listen. He was just off of 54th street, standing outside the Midtown Community Courthouse. He’d been there enough times that the security guards knew his name. He didn’t need assistance.He needed everyone to shut the hell up.Something was wrong.Matt cocked his head to the side and took a deep breath.He could hear crying in Brooklyn. Screaming in Murray Hill. And in Midtown…In Midtown…Matt didn’t understand what he was hearing in Midtown.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Matt Murdock
Comments: 80
Kudos: 128
Collections: Marvel Reverse Big Bang 2020





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art for "Embers" by Gwenpools_Aesthetic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29092722) by [Taste_is_Sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_is_Sweet/pseuds/Taste_is_Sweet). 



> Potential Trigger Warning: 
> 
> For a significant portion of this fic, Matt Murdock regains his vision (because *important plot reasons that would spoil everything if I told you*). Being visually impaired myself, I made every effort not to write this as a good thing. It is traumatic for Matt, and I intended to depict it as such. However, there are some moments when Matt is glad to have his sight back. I reflected for an extended time on how I think Matt Murdock specifically would respond to this scenario, and I wrote it to the best of my ability, but I want to be sensitive to the fact that this is a difficult topic.
> 
> Be sure to check out the amazing note this is inspired by!!

  
Something was wrong. 

Matt stopped dead in his tracks. “Sir?” The voice of a security guard called out to him. “Sir, do you need assistance? Mr. Murdock?”

Matt raised his right hand and shook his head, quieting the guard. The last thing he needed was more sounds right now. He needed to listen. He was just off of 54th street, standing outside the Midtown Community Courthouse. He’d been there enough times that the security guards knew his name. He didn’t need assistance.

He needed everyone to shut the hell up. 

Something was wrong.

Matt cocked his head to the side and took a deep breath.

He could hear crying in Brooklyn. Screaming in Murray Hill. And in Midtown…

In Midtown…

Matt didn’t understand what he was hearing in Midtown. 

It was like fingernails dragged across thick, knitted socks; like soot falling from a long extinguished fire. It sounded like Foggy dislocating his shoulder trying to prove to Marci that they didn’t need to hire someone to move the refrigerator. It sounded like Sister Josephine’s biology class when they’d dissected frogs and one of them hadn’t been quite dead yet. It sounded like nothing Matt had ever heard before. It sounded like insanity.

Matt shuddered.

Something was wrong.

It was moving. It was moving fast and Matt didn’t know what to do.

Matt always knew what to do.

Matt had no clue what to do. The screams were moving closer. The sounds of cars crashing and planes falling from the sky and cell phones dropping to the ground and people disintegrating…

_ People disintegrating?  _

It was moving fast. It was moving closer. 

There were people to protect, but how did you protect people from nothingness? From oblivion? From a single breath and then the person next to you was screaming so they didn’t breathe your ashes into their lungs?

Something was wrong.

Matt didn’t have his suit and, in that moment, for the first time ever, he decided it didn’t matter. 

He had to do something.

This was his city.

And something was wrong.

It struck fast. He knew it struck fast, had heard it strike fast, had felt it around him, but somehow he’d expected it wouldn’t strike him. He was different. He knew better. He could fight it. 

It didn’t care.

He kept moving, even after he was nothing. First his left arm, then the left side of his jaw. His left foot. His shoulder. His torso. 

What did it feel like to be pulled apart at the seams?

Shockingly, it didn't feel like much of anything. It certainly didn’t hurt. It felt soft, really, like a breeze coming in off the ocean at night. It tingled a bit, like when you sit on your foot for too long and it starts to fall asleep. Pins and needles. A phantom arm that you knew was your own, but at the same time wasn’t. 

And then.

Nothing. 

Matt was intimately familiar with darkness. Darkness was at the root of everything Matt did. Darkness was who Matt was.

This was not darkness.

This was nothingness.

No sound. No movement. No smells. No texture. Nothing around him. Nothing within him. Nothing touching him. Nothing to touch. His body was gone. His heartbeat, his breath, the sound of his own cells dividing.

Nothing.

Silence.

Emptiness.

Absolute.

Matt was not.

New York was not.

The world was not.

Matt floated. He wasn’t sure for how long. What was time when you were nothingness? He did not think. He did not feel. He did not wonder. He knew that he once was, as much as the void could know anything. He did not stop to wonder if the void should not know anything.

And then.

_ Bright. _

Matt’s mind helpfully supplied the word as he flung his arms across his eyes. 

_ Bright. Red. Wrong. Danger.  _

Matt sprung to his feet --

_ Why does the void have feet? _

\-- ready for action, fists in front of his face, eyes frantically working to focus on something. Anything.

_ Red. Wrong. Red. Bright. _

Matt blinked. There was something coming towards him. Black and thick and hard.

_ Wrong. Danger. Fight.  _

Matt squared his stance, blinked against the red, and swung. 

_ Wait. Red?  _

His fist collided with an immovable object. Something -- 

_ A foot?  _

\--swept out and caught him by the ankle. He felt himself go down. 

_ That’s not what the sky is supposed to look like…  _ Matt thought, eyes staring at a swirling, blood red horizon.  _ It’s been a long time, but I know that’s not what the sky is supposed to look like. _ He hit the ground and, blissfully, everything went dark again. 


	2. Two

  
  
“Who the hell is he? How did he get here?”

_ “How did any of us get here, man?” _

_ “He tried to hit me.” _

_ “He was scared. Freaked out. You were too, so don’t judge…” _

_ “Yeah, but he tried to hit me. Like really tried. He knows how to fight.” _

_ “Lots of people know how to fight. It doesn’t mean anything. He just looks like some guy in a suit. You should take a step back. You’re going to freak the guy out.” _

_ “I don’t want him to know who I am.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “You heard me. I don’t want him to know who I am. Or you for that matter. It’s safer that way. He just appeared. Maybe he’s not real. Maybe he’s a part of this place. We shouldn’t give him any extra information until we know who he is.” _

_ “Alright. I suppose that makes sense. But I don’t like it.” _

_ “Yeah. I don’t like it either.” _

A pause.

_ “Hey, I think he’s waking up.” _

Matt squeezed his eyes tight and ran his hands through his hair. Moving was a struggle. It felt like he’d lost a fight to Jessica, got hit by a truck, and then rounded out the day by getting absolutely shitface drunk. Did he drink the eel? He didn’t remember drinking the eel. Then again, he always figured that anyone drunk enough to drink the eel wouldn’t remember drinking the eel in the morning. Foggy and Karen hadn’t. 

_ Foggy. _

Something had happened. Something bad had happened. Matt needed to find Foggy.

He blinked his eyes open.

Two men were staring down at him.

He hadn’t known they were there.

Also, he could see them.

_ Something was very, very wrong.  _

“How are you feeling?”

The man who spoke had a soft voice and a kind, bright white smile. His dark hair was cropped close to the sides of his head; his beard was meticulously groomed. He was wearing a grey sweatshirt and dark-washed jeans. Behind him stood another man, about an inch taller, with shoulder length hair and a rough beard. He had worry lines between his eyebrows, and he was frowning down at Matt. His hands were shoved into the pockets of a black jacket, and his legs were poured into tight black jeans.

Matt couldn’t sense anything about them. 

Oh, sure, he heard the first man ask how he was, but outside of that there was nothing. He couldn’t hear their heartbeats or their breathing. He couldn’t smell where they’d been or what they’d had for dinner. When they moved, he couldn’t feel the movement of the air they displaced. There was nothing.

Matt could feel his own heart racing. He could hear it pounding in his own ears, but even that was wrong - muffled somehow - the echo of a sound.

The two men were staring at him.

“Something,” he finally managed to say, pushing himself up to sit, “is very wrong.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t move,” the first man said, squatting down next to him and reaching out a hand out for his arm.

Matt brushed it away. The world swayed around him slightly. “I’m fine.”

He was not fine. 

“Where are we? What happened?”

“What do you remember?” The second man finally spoke, stepping forward slightly. He looked down at Matt through narrowed eyes. Matt wasn’t entirely sure what the expression meant. Probably suspicion. He hadn’t needed to read expressions in a very long time. Hadn’t been able to. 

“I was at the courthouse. People started screaming. Something weird happened to my arm and… the rest of me… and then I was falling, or floating, and then I was here.” It was enough information to not be a lie. More could come later. Or never. A choice that could be made when he had a better idea what was happening.

The two men exchanged glances. “Why were you at the courthouse?” The first man asked. 

“I’m a lawyer.”

The two men exchanged glances again, and this time Matt was pretty certain the look they gave each other was one surprise. 

“Where’d a lawyer learn to fight like that?” The second man asked. 

“I took some cardio kickboxing classes,” Matt answered casually, pushing himself up to stand. The ground beneath him wobbled like Jello. Something in the back of his mind pointed out to him that he wasn’t wearing his suit anymore. He was in black sweatpants and a grey t-shirt. He couldn’t remember changing his clothes. 

“Uh huh,” the first man said, disbelievingly. “What’s your name, friend?”

“What’s yours? Where am I? Why should I trust you?”

“That’s fair.” The first man looked him over again. “I’m Samuel,” he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. Matt didn’t take it, and eventually he - Samuel - dropped it back to his side. 

“And him?” Matt asked, nodding at the second man. His arms were crossed angrily across his chest, and his scowl had deepened. 

“James,” the man finally answered.

“Alright,” Matt said slowly. “Samuel. James. I’m Mike. Care to tell me where I am and why you brought me here?”

“We didn’t bring you here,” Samuel corrected quickly. “We showed up here just like you did, maybe 30 minutes ago. We’ve been trying to figure it out ourselves - where we are. What’s happening. Those sorts of things.”

The two men looked at each other again. James shook his head slightly. Matt might have been used to being blind, but that didn’t mean he was imperceptive. They were clearly hiding something. 

“Can I ask you a personal question, Mike?” Samuel asked.

“You can ask me anything you want. Doesn’t mean I’m going to answer.”

Samuel smiled. “Alright. Are you blind?”

Matt must have made a face because Samuel continued quickly: “I only ask because of the glasses. And the cane. But you seem to be tracking my movements just fine. I know that’s not really an appropriate question, but we’ve noticed that things here… wherever we are… are different.”

“Different how?” Matt asked.

Above them, a red streak swirled across the blood red sky. Matt couldn’t help but follow the movement with his eyes, wondering how he could see the difference. How many shades of red were there, anyway.

“I had a prosthesis,” James said, pulling his left hand out of his pocket. It looked like a regular hand to Matt. “And now I don’t.” He wiggled his flesh and blood fingers. “If something similar happened to you… well, ‘m not sure what that would tell us about the place, but the more knowledge the better, right?”

Matt stared at him, long and hard. He wasn’t used to reading people this way, but even without his enhanced senses he could tell this guy wasn’t about an exchange of information. Gathering it, maybe. Sharing it? Absolutely not.

“What about you?” he asked, nodding at Samuel. “Anything change for you?”

“I…” Samuel trailed off, his teeth clenching slightly. “I think so. I feel… different, but I’m not sure how. I think it’s personal.”

_ It’s all pretty fucking personal if you ask me,  _ Matt couldn’t help but think. He had given too much away already. They knew he was a lawyer. Knew he was blind… If they suspected he was Daredevil. If that’s why he’d been taken, been brought here. If this was some sort of elaborate scheme set up by he couldn’t even guess who… 

But that was the rub, wasn’t it. Who could set something like this up? Maybe Alexandra? But Matt was pretty sure she was actually dead, the hopes of the Hand buried at the bottom of Midland Circle. There was that wizard Danny had been complaining about - Strange - it sounded like something he could have done. But he was supposed to be an Avenger…

People had been dying. Matt hadn’t imagined that. People had been dissolving into dust and then he had followed them and woken up here, surrounded by red and these two men, and for some reason able to see. As risky as it was, Matt knew he needed to trust them at least partially if he was going to learn anything.

“I was blinded when I was eight, and now I can see. I can’t explain it.”

“It’s this place,” Samuel said. “It’s doing something to us. Changing things.”

Matt looked between the two of them. It was weird, seeing people like this… seeing people at all. He felt disoriented. His head hurt, and he was suddenly dizzy. “I need,” Matt stumbled slightly, the ground shifting under him again. He was going to faint. He prayed he didn’t puke. “I need…” he repeated, and then things were going gray. He felt himself lose his balance, watched the ground rush up to meet him. 

James moved swiftly, catching Matt by the elbow and wrapping an arm around his waist. “Hey, I got you. It’s ok.” His voice was thick and dark and Matt hated that he couldn’t hear it properly. It was like listening with cotton balls stuffed in his ears. “You’re alright. Come on. On your feet, soldier.”

“M’not a soldier,” Matt mumbled back, trying to right his feet beneath him. He half-heartedly brushed James off, but James held tight. 

“Well I am,” James grunted out, redistributing Matt’s weight. “And so is he.” He nodded at Samuel. “And right now our mission is to find shelter, alright? Can you help us with that?”

Matt struggled. His legs were wobbly and his eyes didn’t know what to focus on. “It’s all a little strange, is all,” he finally said with a small shrug as James let go.

Matt felt cold.

“That it certainly is,” Samuel said, and both Matt and James’s eyes snapped up at the change in his tone. 

Samuel was looking into the distance.

At the horizon, there was a patch of green surrounded by a bubble of blue. A triangle of brown stood in the middle. A cabin. 

“That was definitely not there a minute ago,” James grumbled. 

“It was not,” Samuel agreed.

“It’s almost certainly a trap,” James said.

“Almost certainly,” Samuel replied.

“Thanos?”

“It has to be, right?”

“Who’s Thanos?” Matt interrupted.

James turned and glared at him, as if surprised and frustrated he was still there. “It’s not important.” 

“Seems important, if it’s a trap.” 

Samuel looked at him, a slow gaze that traveled up and down his body, lingering on his eyes, and Matt was smart enough to know when he was being judged even if he hasn’t seen somebody do it since he was eight. “Like he said, we’re military, and what you’re asking for is classified.”

Matt really wished his ears were working right, because he was about 97% sure this guy was full of shit and he’d like to be able to confirm that last three percent. 

“Army?” Matt asked, looking carefully between them.

“I’m Army,” James answered. “He’s Air Force.” 

“A joint mission. Must be a big deal.”

“It is,” Samuel agreed. “The biggest.” 

“People were dying,” Matt said bluntly. “At the courthouse, right before I came here. Or, at least I thought that they were. Seemed like they were turning into dust. Don’t suppose this Thanos guy had something to do with that?”

“It’s classified,” Samuel repeated, but his voice sounded thicker this time.

“Yeah. Ok. It’s just… here’s the thing.” Matt took a few steps away from James. He still felt shaky, but he often found pacing helped him get his words in order. “I thought everyone was dying, but then what was happening to them happened to me, and I ended up here. So either I’m dead and this is hell - in which case you’re in here with me - or this Thanos fellow managed to do something truly terrifying. Either way, it seems like  _ classified  _ might not be your biggest concern at the moment.”

Matt watched as James clenched and unclenched his left fist, then lifted it to his face and wiggled his fingers slightly. “Sorry, pal. There’s no way to know if we can trust you.” 

“And yet you expect me to trust you?”

“He’s got a point,” Samuel said softly. 

James glared at Samuel, then turned his attention back to Matt. “Fine. Don’t trust us, and we won’t trust you. Not yet anyway. But I still think finding shelter is our best bet. You can come with us or not, it’s your choice.”

“We’re not going to leave you here,” Samuel said. The words were meant for Matt, but Samuel directed it towards James. 

“Do I have a say in that? Am I your prisoner?” Matt snapped back.

“What? No. Of course not. You…” Samuel considered him again. “I don’t know what other choice there is, though. It wouldn’t feel right, leaving you out here like this.”

Matt looked at him, then at the house in the distance. He wished his brain had more helpful thoughts to supply than  _ brown  _ and  _ wrong.  _ If things were normal - if  _ he _ were normal, or at least normal for him, he’d already know what the house was made of, what was inside, and whether or not these two knew anything about it. 

It was infuriating. 

“No,” he finally said. “You’re right. It’s the best choice.”

“Let’s go, then,” James said gruffly, and took off for the cabin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! If you haven't done so, please check out the amazing art that this fic is inspired by. I had snagged this art intending to go in a completely different direction, but then I got started and this just demanded to be written. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I'll be posting quickly, but please do still leave me notes and let me know what you think!! If for no other reason than I could really use the dopamine rush <3


	3. Three

_ Matt didn’t recognize the trap for what it was until it was too late. _

The house was clean, and Matt was both surprised by and thankful for the attention paid by James and Samuel as they approached and entered it. If Matt had any doubt about their military claims, they were quickly assuaged by the precision with which these two worked together. They were a team; of that there was no doubt.

That didn’t make Matt trust them any more.

It possibly made him trust them even less.

He’d had enough of wars and armies. Stick had seen to that.

The first month was Hell. Matt was tense - constantly on edge. He’d wake in the morning with a start, positive that the sound he’d heard was someone breaking into the house, only to discover that it was James making breakfast; that he and Samuel had already been up for an hour and Matt had slept right through it. The cabin itself seemed to have a never ending supply of food - a large garden that was always lush with every kind of fruit and vegetable imaginable, a freezer that seemed to immediately replenish itself with an innumerable variety of meats, and a pantry that held much more than possible for it’s modest size. 

What it didn’t have was 30 minute or less delivery from Royal Dragon Restaurant.

Matt knew how to cook. He did. Sure, he didn’t do it very often, but that was because he didn’t want food smells lingering in his apartment and not because he didn’t know how. But he had learned to cook after his father had passed. He couldn’t remember making much more than a peanut butter sandwich or a bowl of cereal before he lost his vision, and things just didn’t make sense when he was forced to rely on his sight. 

The first thing he tried was scrambled eggs - previously a Matt Murdock specialty made for any of the overnight visitors he more than occasionally had in his apartment - but he was used to feeling out the smallest imperfections, hitting the shell just right to split it in a perfect line before dropping the egg into the bowl, whipping it until he could hear it was consistently frothy, then sliding it into a precisely heated pan.

Now? Well…

Either these shells were much more structurally sound than he was used to, or Matt’s first tap of the egg on the counter was laughably light. His second attempt didn’t fare much better, and earned him an arched eyebrow from Samuel and a derisive snort from James. 

_ Rude. _

Unfortunately, this meant that he had the attention of both of them when he slammed the egg too hard into the countertop, splashing slimy egg white over his hand and across his shirt.

“Fuck,” Matt mumbled, quickly cleaning up his mess. 

“Want me to make you…” James rose from where he’d been sitting, reading on the couch.

“I can do it myself!” Matt snapped back. 

James’s eyes went wide, then he sat slowly back down and returned to his book. “‘Course you can.” 

“Must be as challenging to gain a sense as it is to lose one,” Samuel said, not moving from where he was sitting at the kitchen table. 

“I’m not asking for your sympathy,” Matt snarled.

“And I wasn’t giving it,” Samuel agreed, holding Matt’s glare and returning a soft, nonthreatening smile. It was Matt who finally broke away, turning his back to the rest of the living area while he wiped out the bowl and got himself back under control. Ten minutes later he was eating slightly rubbery eggs that were definitely a little more brown than he would prefer. 

_ The one good thing,  _ he thought to himself, as he forced himself to swallow another bite of the overcooked eggs,  _ is that I can barely taste how bad these are.  _

One month turned into two and they fell into an uneasy rhythm, slow and sluggish. Samuel made up a makeshift calendar and affixed it to the fridge with magnets that appeared overnight and, while James argued that it was unnecessary, Matt got the impression that Samuel had actually done it for him. James was the one who checked off the dates each morning - small black x’s, always perfectly placed in the top right corner of each box.

Samuel and James cooked. It made the most sense, they both argued, for one person to make a meal for all three of them as opposed to everyone fending for themselves, and nobody wanted to eat Matt’s cooking. His sense of taste still wasn’t right. Everything was too salty. Too sweet. Too spicy. Matt tried to help where he could - making a salad or cleaning up after - but it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. The house was too quiet. Outside, in their small patch of green jutting up harshly against the red, the silence was even worse. When he ventured outside, Matt could feel it seeping into his bones. 

So he stopped going outside.

James and Samuel sparred, but Matt stopped joining them after the first few times. It wasn’t that they were stronger than him, and they really weren’t, but he was too slow. With his senses diminished, he couldn’t react the way he wanted to. His reflexes were shit. He couldn’t dodge, couldn’t block, missed easy shots…

He slept more than he ever had before, more than he knew was healthy, could hardly eat, stopped praying. Sometime, around the start of the third month, he went to bed knowing it was a turning point. Either he had to ask Samuel and James for help, or he should trek out into the redness and be done with it all. He was already in hell; what could it matter at this point. 

The next morning, his eyes opened and immediately fell onto the thin black rectangular box sitting on his bedside table. It was still weird - seeing - and it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at was wrong. It hadn’t been there before. It was new. 

The house did that sometimes. The food constantly replenished, but other things appeared as well. Someone would mention something in passing - a book, or a game they’d played in their childhood - and the next morning it would be there waiting for them. James woke up one morning with a box of throwing knives at the foot of his bed and a target set up behind the cabin on the small green patch that wasn’t really a lawn and definitely wasn’t grass. Another morning, Matt walked out of his bedroom to find James staring down at a colorful pile of yarn sitting on the couch. “You?” He’d asked Matt, who barely had time to shake his head  _ no  _ before Samuel had swooped in and gathered the brightly colored balls into his arms. The next morning there was a basket for said yarn to go into, and its contents seemed to never deplete. James got cigarettes, an old-fashioned Victrola, and a large box of records, Samuel got a journal, a yoga mat, and a stack of adult coloring books. Matt got a bible, a fidget spinner, and a bottle of whiskey.

And now this.

Matt picked up the object and ran his fingers over it, disappointed as ever that all they felt was the cool smoothness of plastic and glass. His first thought was that it was a phone, which was strange because their own phones had never worked here. No one to call when you were in hell, he supposed. He touched the glass with one finger and the screen blinked to life.

For a moment, Matt was confused by the list of words scrolling down the screen.  _ Alternative, Blues, Children’s, Classical, Comedy, Country, Dance… _

It wasn’t until he noticed the two small earbuds still sitting on the bedside table that he put it together. 

_ Music. _

Sure, James played music on his record player, but his tastes seemed to be very limited and he didn’t have it on very often. When he listened, it seemed to make him sad. 

Matt quickly slipped the buds into his ears, selected the “classical” genre, and pressed “random.” Immediately, the soft tones of Einaudi’s  _ Una Mattina  _ filled his ears, drowning out the deafening silence. He felt his shoulders relax as he let out a shaking breath, closing his eyes, letting the sounds wash over him. 

The music helped. The buds were so small they practically disappeared into his ears, and he kept them in all the time, turning down the sound when James or Sam were talking to him, then turning them back up to push out the nothingness had previously filled so much of his day. With the music in he could read longer, learning again to recognize the shapes on the page with his eyes and not his fingers. He began working in the garden, relishing in the feeling of dirt sliding across his hands. He started to cook, too, re-learning about his palate with his new, unenhanced taste buds and sense of smell. And as he read and gardened and cooked, he observed.

There were things he noticed that he never could have noticed before - the almost flamelike red of the constantly swirling sky, the purple shine of the eggplant he pulled out of the garden, the flecks of muted blue nestled alongside the grey of James’s eyes. 

He started noticing James more. The way he was always there - was always close. He noticed Samuel, too. The way he sat apart more nights than not. The way he stared at the same page in his book for 20 minutes without moving his eyes once, the way he held on too tightly to the yarn in his hands sometimes, when he thought no one was looking. 

James stayed close to Samuel as well. Refilling his water and passing him tea, handing out small pieces of chocolate that the house left for them, telling stories and asking about his day despite the fact that nothing ever really changed. James was doing all the same things for Samuel that Matt was only starting to realize were also being done for him. 

James was holding them together.

“That might have been the greatest vegetable related thing I have ever eaten,” James said one night, close to the start of month four, bringing a stack of plates into the kitchen and setting them by the sink. Matt had made spicy vegetarian pad thai and they had devoured it. “I mean it’s no steak, but…”

Matt pulled his hands out of the sudsy water and flicked some bubbles into James’s hair, admiring the way the iridescent, rainbow tinted spheres stuck to James’s soft brown waves. “That’s an underhanded compliment if I ever heard one. You can’t eat steak every night. It’s not good for you!” 

“Oh, I bet I could and I’d feel great about it,” James replied with a toothy grin, bumping his left shoulder against Matt’s right one, then freezing as if surprised by the movement his body had just made. They stood in silence for a moment, then James grabbed a towel and began to dry. “You don’t have to do the dishes every night, you know,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “You never did, but especially now that you’re cooking. We can take turns.” 

“Thanks,” Matt said, suddenly very aware of the fact that he didn’t know what he was supposed to look at. “But I don’t mind. It’s cold here, you know? This is a nice way to warm up.”

“Is it cold here?” James asked, focusing intently on the plate he was drying. “I’m sort of always cold so I hadn’t noticed.” 

A few more long minutes passed, silent except for the sloshing of water and clinking of dishes, and it was James who finally broke it again. “You seem to be doing better.”

“I…” Matt found himself at a loss for words.

“It’s ok. You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. I can’t imagine how hard it was for you - for both of you.” He nodded towards the living room where they both knew Samuel was sitting. “I just wanted to say that I noticed, and I’m thankful. It wasn’t looking so hot for a while there.” 

“You’ve been taking care of me.” It wasn’t a question. “You’ve been taking care of both of us.”

James shrugged. “Listen, I was real out of it for a while… like a long while. Before we came here. I don’t know if I would have come out on top if there hadn’t been people looking out for me. Figure it’s the least I can do to pay back the favor.”

There was a soft drawl to James’s voice that Matt hadn’t noticed before, and he tried not to dwell on the fact that he couldn’t quite place it.

“Do you know what’s happening to us?” Matt asked.

“Not really, no.”

“But you and Samuel. You know more than you’re sharing?”

James’s silence was all the answer Matt needed.

“On one hand I get that it’s classified, but on the other…” Matt gestured out the window at the flaming sky. “What does classified matter when we’re stuck in hell?”

“You think this is hell?” James seemed genuinely surprised.

“What else could it be?”

James frowned. “I don’t think it’s hell.” He looked around. “This place… I think it’s trying to help us. It gives us what we need.”

“It keeps us complacent.” 

“It’s tried to fix things.”

“What has it fixed?” Matt felt the red, hot, burning anger starting to build in his stomach. “Me? You think it fixed me? I wasn’t broken. I didn’t need to be…”

“Wait. Stop.” James held up his hands and took two steps back. “I didn’t say anything about you, ok? And I didn’t say it fixed anything. I said it  _ tried _ to fix things. It failed. It failed miserably. I’m not arguing that. But you, me, Sam...uel. We’ve all had bad things happen to us, right? You said you were blinded at eight. Anything worse happen to you than that, Mike?”

_ My mother left, my father died, my father figure abandoned me, the love of my life died in my arms, I let down my best friends again and again…  _ Matt ticked off the items silently in his head. Still… If he was being objective, getting _ hit by a truck carrying radioactive materials and also being blinded by said materials  _ was pretty high on the list.

“Maybe not,” he admitted. 

“I was captured, a prisoner of war, tortured, experimented on. ‘S how I lost my arm.”

“Shit,” Matt said softly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…”

James brushed him off with a wave of the hand. “It’s not a contest. I wasn’t trying to say mine was worse than yours. I’m saying this place, it fixed that. It gave me my arm back, took away some of the pain. The memories are still there - maybe I’d rather those be gone than have my arm back, but it’s something. I think I’m better like this. I’m happier. I really am. That doesn’t feel like hell to me.”

“And Samuel?” Matt asked.

James looked at him, slouched slightly on the couch, knitting. “It’s not my story to tell. The thing this place tried to fix… it was emotional, not physical. Bad memories. And it took them away, but they were a piece of him, you know? Like your blindness was a piece of you. He can’t remember what he can’t remember, obviously, but he knows there are holes. Gaps. I… I dealt with that, too… memory loss, I mean. It’s hard. Even if the memories are bad, taking them away doesn’t always fix the problem.” James swallowed hard. “But still, it was probably the worst thing that ever happened to him and the st… this place… it took it away. I think it thinks it’s doing us a kindness. It gives us what we need. It gives us what we ask for.”

“I could go for a boxing bag,” Matt said, without thinking. 

“You did say you took cardio kickboxing, didn’t you.”

“It was a little more than that,” Matt admitted.

“I’d love to hear more about that sometime. Maybe go a round or two?”

Matt smiled at him. “Maybe sometime.”

James stared at him for a moment, his face slightly sad and mostly unreadable. Then he turned abruptly, put a stack of dried plates in the cabinet, and walked out into the living room. 

The next morning, the cabin had a new room - a small alcove off the living area with a boxing bag hanging from the ceiling and three sets of gloves lying alongside it. The morning after that, the room had expanded and held a regulation sized boxing ring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT'S GOING ON????
> 
> I wish I could post this a bit more slowly to build suspense, but you don't so I won't. Also the due date for the MRBB is... [checks imaginary watch]... tonight. Oops. Not quite going to make that, but I am going to post two chapters a night until this baby is done for you!! Let me know what you think!


	4. Four

_ Matt didn’t recognize the trap for what it was until it was too late. _

“Ok, that was genuinely impressive. I’m impressed. You’ve impressed me,” James said, holding out a gloved hand. Matt clasped it just below the elbow, pulling James up from where he was sitting on the ground. 

“You let me hit you,” Matt said with a shake of his head, releasing James’s hand before wiping the sweat off his forehead with the hem of his shirt. 

“I let you get in the hook, sure,” James agreed, pulling off his own gloves. “But only because I was expecting an uppercut next. You’ve been dropping your shoulder on your right uppercuts and I was going to take advantage of that.”

“I have not”

“You absolutely have.”

“Huh.” Matt began unwrapping his hands as the two men walked back into the main part of the house and to the kitchen. James filled two glasses of water and handed one to Matt, who took it appreciatively as he leaned against the counter. “Well thank you for sparring with me. I mean it. I know you’re holding back, so I just hope you’re getting something out of it too.”

“I’m not holding back.” James quickly drained the water in his glass, then refilled it at the sink. A rivulet of water trickled down his jaw, and Matt couldn’t help but wonder the temperature difference between the chill of the water and the heat of James’s skin. “Maybe I was at first, but I’m not anymore. You’re good. Fast.” He leaned against the counter, copying Matt’s posture, and Matt felt like the mere inch of air between them was practically palpable. “I move differently than I did before… here. It’s the arm, obviously.” He held up his left hand and rotated his at the shoulder, as if to demonstrate. “But it’s more than that. I’ve lost weight…”

“I’ve noticed,” Matt said, before wondering if that was a weird answer. “It’s not bad, I mean… You don’t look unhealthy or anything…” he trailed off, feeling unbelievably awkward and longing - even more than usual - for the days when he could tell how someone was feeling just by the sound of their breath and the scent of their skin. 

“Thanks.” As far as Matt could tell, James sounded unperturbed. “I’ve been feeling a lot like I felt… well… like I felt before I went to war.”

Matt could see the difference. James was still clearly strong, but he was lean too. Less bulky. Still muscular, but in a less intimidating way.

“Anyway, It’s different. I’m getting used to it - my new… old body. It’s like rediscovering something familiar.”

“Well I’m happy to help with that in any way I can.” 

It wasn’t until Matt heard Samuel snort from across the room that he realized what he had said.

“I… shit, I didn’t… I mean…” Matt stumbled, blush spreading up his neck and across his cheeks. Was this what it felt like to be Foggy? Matt bet this was what it felt like to be Foggy.

“Oh no,” James said with a wink, completely unfazed. “There are no take backs. You said it, and I know just the thing I need.”

“ _ James _ .” Samuel drew out the name.

“What?”

“You can’t ask him to do that.”

“Why not? He said anything? Just because you don’t want to...” James looked between the two of them. Matt could feel his blush deepening.

Samuel let out a deep sigh. “Because it’s weird. People don’t just ask their friends to help them with something like that.”

“But Steve always did it for me, whenever I asked!”

“How many times do I need to tell you this? You and Steve did not have a normal friendship. A couple of weird-ass old men…” Samuel muttered something else under his breath that Matt, annoyingly, couldn’t quite make out. 

James glowered.

“Who’s Steve?” Matt asked, hoping to change the subject.

The glance exchanged between James and Samuel was quick, but Matt caught it. 

“Nobody,” James said, before draining the last of his water and turning away from Matt again to refill his glass. “Just a friend of ours from before.” 

“And you and he had… an arrangement?”

James turned back to the sink and gave him an appraising once over, and Matt tried not to flinch under the weight of his stare.

“Mike.”

“James.”

James smiled at him, and it was almost predatory. “Would you please do me the absolute honor of cutting my hair?” 

***

“You should have probably just said no…” James said, fingering the abomination of a mop hanging off of his head.

“I did tell you that I’d spent the majority of my life blind and had never even considered cutting someone’s hair before,” Matt replied. He was still holding the scissors, and when he reached out his hand to cut off a stray tuft of hair from behind James’s right ear, James snatched them away from him. 

“So this is my fault?”

Matt forced a smile. “It’s not that bad?”

“It’s definitely that bad!” Samuel called from the hallway.

“Fuck off!” James called back. He turned to the mirror and ran his hands through his hair. “What do I do?”

“I’m sorry. Maybe the house will give you some hats?”

James caught Matt’s eye in the bathroom mirror, then smiled. It was a nice smile, warm, and James’s eyes crinkled around the edges. “Yeah, Mike. Maybe the house will give me some hats.” 

Matt tried to smile back, but it was forced.

“Hey,” James turned quickly to face him, catching one of his hands this time. “I’m messing with you. This wasn’t your fault. Truly. You did tell me that you didn’t know what you were doing, and I asked you to do it anyway. That’s not on you; that’s on me.”

“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have…”

“I wasn’t going to let it go,” James interrupted. “I would have harassed you about it every day until we ended up right here, because I’m kind of an asshole like that.”

“Yeah you are!” Samuel called from the hallway.

“I thought I told you to fuck off!!” James shouted back.

Matt smiled genuinely this time. “What are you going to do?”

James shrugged. “I’ll get a good night’s sleep, then try to fix it in the morning. Everything seems worse when you’re tired.”

“That’s smart.” Matt looked down at the hand James was still holding, then back up at James himself. There was something about him… olive skin and dark eyes. His hair was, currently, absolutely ridiculous, chestnut curls sticking out in every direction, but he somehow still managed to make it look good, and Matt couldn’t help himself. He reached out his free hand and smoothed a stray strand.

James never looked away from Matt’s face. “Did that help?”

“Not really.”

“Did it make you feel better?”

“Maybe.” Matt shrugged. “A little.”

“You want to try again? See if it helps more the second time?” 

James held Matt’s eyes with his own as Matt slowly lifted his hand and pushed it through James’s hair. Even without enhanced senses the strands were smooth against his skin, and Matt could smell the faintest hint of almonds. James leaned into the touch as Matt’s hand moved down the back of his head to the nape of his neck. 

“What do you think?” James asked.

“Maybe one more time? Just to be sure? Third time’s the charm, after all.” 

James stood as Matt took a step closer, bringing them face to face. He dragged his teeth over his lower lip and Matt stared at the red flush left behind, as if hypnotized by it. “Am I reading this wrong?” James asked, placing a hand on Matt’s waist. “Don’t want to make you uncomfortable, doll. I just can’t help but notice how pretty…”

“YOU’RE MAKING ME UNCOMFORTABLE!” Samuel’s voice rang from the kitchen. “YOU COULD AT LEAST HAVE THE DECENCY TO SHUT THE DAMN DOOR!!’

Matt jumped back from James, who gritted his teeth and looked like smoke might come bellowing from his ears. 

“I’M GOING TO MURDER YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!” James shouted back at Samuel.

“WOULDN’T BE THE FIRST TIME YOU TRIED!” came the reply. 

“I should just…” Matt gestured towards the door, then slipped under James’s arm and out of the bathroom.

“Mike!” James called after him. “Hey Mike, wait!” 

But Matt was already shutting the door to his bedroom.

He collapsed down onto the bed, bagging his head on the mattress a few times for good measure.  _ Bad, Matt. Bad!  _ he thought, as he fisted his own hair in his hands and pulled slightly. He didn’t know James, didn’t trust him.  _ Don’t even trust him enough to tell him my real name… _

_ On the other hand _ , Matt reasoned,  _ it wouldn’t even make the top three worst sex related decisions you’ve ever made… _

Those honors definitely belonged to Mary, Wade and Felecia respectively. 

_ No,  _ Matt repeated to himself.  _ This is neither the place nor the time. You’re stuck here for who knows how long, in a place that wants you to get complacent. You can’t lose focus. You can’t let down your guard… _

_ But it’s been so long and it would feel so good… _

_ NO!  _ His brain shouted at him. Dejected, Matt lay down on his bed, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep. 


	5. Five

_  
Matt didn’t recognize the trap for what it was until it was too late. _

The next morning, James’s hair was perfect. 

“You fixed it!” Matt said with forced cheeriness, doing his best to try to hide the fact that he’d been pacing his room for the past 30 minutes, knowing he had to leave but unsure of what awaited him. Doing his best to hide the fact that he hadn’t been able to fall asleep the night before, that he’d tossed and turned thinking about James and the red of his lower lip, the glint in his eye, and the twang in his voice as he’d called Matt  _ doll.  _ Doing his best to hide the fact that he’d finally given up trying to stop thinking about those things and had resorted to taking matters into his own hand…

_ Jerking off, thinking about your roommate in Hell,  _ he thought, with a resigned shake of his head.  _ Although you’re already here, so really what does it matter? _

James turned to face him and smiled, and the brilliance of it took Matt’s breath away. “Actually, I didn’t do anything. I literally woke up like this. That’s a song, right? It’s pretty great though, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Matt agreed, longing to run his fingers through it again. “It’s a little old fashioned, but… in a good way? Is it retro?” Matt was never quite sure he understood fashion - that was one thing that had really slipped by him over the past 30 years - but James liked old things, like the Victrola and the records he listened to on it, so Matt figured that was probably what he’d been going for.

James’s smile widened. “You hear that?” he called at Samuel. “I’m retro!”

“You keep telling yourself that.” Samuel responded, snagging a pastry from the pink box that hadn’t been on the counter the night before. He took it to the couch and sat down with a despondent sigh. Then, setting it aside untouched, he stood up again. “You know what? Be retro if you want. Follow your dreams. I’m going to start out the morning putting that boxing bag to good use. See if I can get myself out of this funk.”

“You want company?” James offered.

“Not today. Today I’m going to go blast some Aretha and work out my frustrations the old fashioned way. I’ll be an hour, but probably not longer so…” Matt watched something unspoken pass between them. “So if you have any frustrations of your own that you need to work out…” Samuel continued.

“I get it,” James cut him off. “And you’re an asshole.” 

“Oh, is that why you love me,” Samuel said with a grin, and for a second Matt thought James was actually going to punch him.

“Would you get the fuck out of here already??” James took two steps towards Samuel, who laughed and quickly ducked out of his reach. 

“You’re losing your touch, old man. You’re nowhere near as scary as you used to be.” Samuel stepped into the gym. “One hour!” he called, and then shut the door behind him. A moment later, the opening cords of “Freeway of Love” came pouring through the closed door.

James stared at it for a moment, then turned to Matt. “Truly, I’m going to murder him,” he said with a soft shake of his head. The light shone softly off of his hair as he looked down.

“I don’t actually know what’s happening right now,” Matt admitted. He ran his hands through his hair, and watched as James tracked the movement with his eyes. 

“He’s…” James’s teeth caught his lower lip again, working it mercilessly. “He thinks he’s being helpful. He really does. And I…” James laughed. “Would you believe I used to be good at this?”

“If you mean what I think you mean,” Matt said, taking a step closer, “then I used to be good at it too.”

“I’d say you’re still pretty good, doll,” James said, placing a hand on Matt’s hip. “Up until the point where we got interrupted and you took off.”

“Yeah.” Matt stared at James’s face. His eyes were cool and grey, and the skin around them crinkled softly when he smiled. A strand of his hair lay across his forehead, and without thinking Matt reached out his hand and smoothed it back into place. “Seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”

“And now?” James asked. He cupped the side of Matt’s face and ran his thumb across Matt’s jawbone. “Does runnin’ seem like the right thing to do?”

“Probably.”

“Should I stop?”

“Absolutely not.” 

“You don’t need to be afraid.”

“I’m never afraid.” Matt leaned forward and caught James’s lips with his own, wasting no time in dragging his teeth across that plump lower lip. James let out a low, shaky breath, then slid his hand from Matt’s hip to the small of his back, pulling their bodies closer together. Matt tangled the fingers of one hand in James’s hair, spread the other firm between James’s shoulder blades. He had lost weight in the six months they’d been there, but he was strong - solid - and Matt relished in both the feeling of a warm body under his hands and in the smooth glide of James’s palms up and down his back. James’s fingers twitched at the hem of his shirt and Matt nodded his consent without breaking the kiss. 

The first touch of James’s hands on his skin felt like flames, and it wasn’t until that moment that Matt realized how touch-starved he truly was. He moaned, couldn’t help himself, and his knees buckled slightly.

“Shhhh.” James pulled away enough to whisper against his lips. “I’ve got you, sweetheart.” He slowly started to move backwards, drawing Matt with him towards the bedroom. “There was a time not so long ago that I would have just picked you up and carried you, but this’ll have to do.” 

Matt smiled at James, then kissed him gently on the corner of his mouth. “We’re practically the same size. You’d hurt yourself trying to pick me up.”

“Hmm... Not before I wouldn’t have.” He pulled Matt a few steps further, maneuvering them past the threshold and into his room, before spinning them around and pushing Matt back onto the bed. James climbed on top of him, straddling Matt’s legs with his thick thighs. “How do you want to do this?” 

“However you want. I’m--” Matt gasped as James caught the hem of his shirt and practically tore it off, then licked a wet stripe up the side of his neck. “--flexible,” he managed to choke out before Jame’s lips clamped down over his own.

“So I’ve noticed.” James kissed across Matt’s jawbone and down his neck, his stubble just enough to rub against Matt’s tender skin, blooming heat in its wake. Matt wished he could feel each and every strand of James’s hair, wished he could hear more clearly the sharp intake of breath as he scratched his fingernails against James’s scalp. 

“Do these hurt?” James asked, kissing alongside but not touching the scars on Matt’s chest. “Should I avoid them?”

“No.” Matt ran his hands down James’s back, feeling the warmth of his skin. “But thank you for checking.”

James hummed, then resumed kissing across Matt’s chest, speaking breathily between gentle nips of his teeth at Matt’s skin. “Had some scars of my own once, before here. Nasty ones. They didn’t hurt, but I didn’t like when people touched them.” He paused, mouth over Matt’s nipple, breath warm on Matt’s skin. “That’s not true, exactly. It wasn’t touch that bothered me. It was when people looked at them. I thought they were ugly, so I figured everybody else must too. Took me out of the moment.”

“Hey.” Matt caught James’s arm and pulled him up, pressing their lips together softly. “I find it very hard to believe that any part of you was ugly.”

“That’s because you’d never seen me before here.” 

“Before here, I hadn’t seen anything or anyone since I was eight.” 

James grinned. “So you’re saying you’re a bad judge, then. Good to know.” 

Matt groaned then rolled, flipping them so that he was stradling James, his legs snug against James’s tight waist, sitting up, looking down at him. Carefully he pulled James’s deep blue t-shirt off over his head, then he ran his hands over James’s chest and abs. “I’m saying you’re gorgeous, and that it’s a real testament to how depressed I was that it took me so long to notice. Sometimes, when I was younger, I used to imagine what it would be like to see again, and it was never this good.”

“So you’re a smooth talker, huh?” James wrapped his hands around Matt’s back, then pulled him down so their bodies were flush together. “Feels like somebody probably warned me about lawyers at some point in my life; silver tongues and all that.” James rolled them again, keeping Matt’s body tight against his before pressing him down into the mattress. “Gotta say, I really like lookin’ up at you, doll. I’m looking forward to spending some quality time looking up at you. But not today. Today,” he kissed back down Matt’s chest with purpose this time, pausing to plant kisses along Matt’s hip bone as he peeled back Matt’s loose sweatpants. “Today, I want to show you what I can do with  _ my _ tongue.”

Matt bit at his lips, trying to hold back the groan threatening to escape as James dragged his tongue, heavy and hot, up the length of Matt’s cock. 

“Let me hear you, sweetheart.” James’s lips brushed against Matt’s skin as he talked, sending shivers up Matt’s spine. “How do I know if I’m making you feel good if I can’t hear you?” 

James closed his lips around the head of Matt’s dick and sucked gently, and this time Matt couldn’t have contained his whimper even if he’d tried. His hands clenched and unclenched fruitlessly against the sheets as James teased him, alternating between soft kitten licks down the shaft and mouthing tenderly at the tip. 

“Please,” Matt gasped, as James moved lower, just a hint of teeth scraping against Matt’s balls.

“Please what, darling?” James nipped at him softly, then returned to thoroughly and meticulously covering Matt’s cock with kisses. 

“Please,” Matt repeated, his hands finding their way to the back of James’s head. “I need you. Need more.” 

James hummed softly. “You ask so nicely. What I’d like most is to spend  hours  taking you apart, working you open with my tongue and my fingers, keeping you on the edge until you’re delirious and begging for me to fuck you.” 

He took Matt deeper into his mouth this time, his mouth wet and warm, and it took every ounce of self control Matt had not to jerk up his hips and thrust deeper, not to press down on James’s head, to just take what he was being given. Slowly, so slowly, James sunk down until his nose was pressed into Matt’s pubic hair. Matt felt James’s throat contract once around his cock, and then just as slowly his mouth was sliding back up until he popped off with a lewd slurp. 

“But I suppose we don’t have time for that,” James continued as if he hadn’t just interrupted himself. “Sam said we only had an hour, so I’d better use my time wisely.” He stood, casually stripping off his remaining clothing as he walked to the bedside table, pulled open the drawer, and retrieved a small bottle of lube and a condom. 

The house was not a blessing. It was not of God. Still, Matt offered up a silent prayer of thanks for letting him see this. Staring at James, none of the narrative that he’d been telling himself for the past six months made any sense. He was no longer convinced he was in Hell. How could this be punishment? How could he repent for years of violence and sin when James was so breathtakingly beautiful? Broad shoulders and strong biceps, dark nipples pebbled on rounded pecs that Matt desperately wanted to dig his fingers into, the hint of a six-pack, and a trail of dark hair that ran down to frame James’s cock, which was jutting out proudly in front of him. 

Matt was impressed - impressed with perhaps even a hint of concern. Visually speaking he didn’t have a lot to go off of, but he’d had his hands on plenty of men in his life and James seemed big. His tongue darted out, licking at his lower lip, and it was then that James looked up and caught him staring.

“Like something you see?” He stalked back down to the foot of the bed, then crawled up between Matt’s thighs and looked up at Matt from underneath dark, heavy eyelashes. “Because I like everything I see, darlin’. And I’m looking forward to using my other senses too. Already know you taste amazing,” he licked at Matt again, running just the tip of his tongue from root to tip. “And you smell just as good.” James burrined his nose in the crease at Matt’s hip and breathed in deeply. “Want to feel more of you.” Matt heard the click of a plastic cap, then felt James’s lubed fingers slide gently over the sensitive skin around his hole, not pressing in, just circling. Matt squirmed, head rolling back on the pillow and hips jerking of their own accord, desperate for more. James chuckled. “Want to hear what kinds of sounds you make.”

Matt let out an extended, shaky gasp as James slowly and carefully pressed a thick finger into him. 

“That’s all you’ve got?” James teased, slowly working his finger in and out as Matt bit down on his lower lip, stifling another moan. “Come on, doll. You’re so quiet. I need to hear more.” He pushed in a second finger and Matt whined.

“Please.”

“Please what, sweetheart?”

“Please fuck me. Please.”

“Jesus you’re sweet.”

Matt flinched slightly at the curse.

They were face to face, James’s slightly larger frame above Matt’s, looking down at him, and he leaned forward and nipped at Matt’s lips, fingers still slowly working him open. “You don’t like it when I say that.” 

Matt frowned. Now wasn’t the time. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. I’m just trying to understand you, darling. I’ve got my fingers in your ass and you’re begging me to fuck you which, by the way, I’m about to do, but it bothers you when I blaspheme. Have I got that right?” 

Matt nodded, feeling more than just a little stupid. “Please just fuck me already.” 

“You’re not ready.”

“I am!” Matt wiggled his hips as if to show exactly how ready he was.

“Sweetheart, I can feel how tight you are, and I know exactly how big I am. You’re not ready. It’ll hurt.”

Matt could feel his face getting warm. He needed this - needed more. “I can take it.” 

James’s hand stilled, and Matt started to panic that he’d said the wrong thing when James started to pull his hand back. “So you’re one of those, then?”

Matt arched his back and howled as James drove his fingers back in - the sudden burn of the third delicious, making Matt see sparks behind his eyelids. 

“You need it a little rough, huh? Need a little pain with your pleasure.” 

James’s hand was moving faster, and Matt couldn’t help the small  _ ohs  _ and  _ ahs  _ that were falling from his lips as James carved out space inside his body. 

It felt different than before; less but somehow also more. Before, every touch had been too much, and Matt had been overwhelmed by the heat and the pressure of it all. Now, with his senses dulled, Matt could feel the pleasure as it built slowly inside of him. He couldn’t feel the texture of James’s fingerprints, couldn’t feel his heartbeat through his hands, but he could feel it when James’s fingers found and pressed against his prostate. He could feel it when James started to pick up speed. He could feel it when James suddenly, and without warning, pulled out, only to press the head of his cock up against where his fingers had just been.

“You want this?” And Matt couldn’t hear James’s blood vessels dilating, but he could hear that James’s voice was wrecked, and he could see the want on James’s face. 

“Need it,” Matt managed to reply.

“Fuck. Ok, baby. I won’t make you wait anymore.”

It hurt. It did. The stretch burned as James pressed into him, and Matt wasn’t sure what he was saying but he knew he wasn’t being quiet anymore as he wrapped his legs around James’s back and pulled him in tighter. 

“You like that?” James snapped his hips and Matt keened, high and sharp, a sound he was sure would carry all the way to where Samuel was exercising, regardless of the music blasting. He didn’t care. Nothing had felt like this before. Nothing. 

“Just think of all the time we spent sitting around doing nothing,” James said, before snapping his hips again, “when we could have been doing this.”

Matt made a sound that he hoped read as agreement, his hands clawing against James’s back, grasping for purchase, as James thrust into him again and again. Matt could feel the heat building inside of him - a gradual swell, starting in the base of his spine and spreading outward. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but gasp for breath and hold on tight, his mouth open in a wordless  _ oh.  _

Eventually, James dropped down to his elbows, forearms bracketing Matt’s head. His eyes were locked on Matt’s, cold grey with flecks of blue. “You feel good, sweetheart? Do you want to come?”

Matt nodded frantically. The hard planes of James’s abs were rubbing up against his cock, but it wasn’t enough. “Please.”

“Never going to get tired of hearing that.” James kissed him once, sharp and demanding, then pulled apart, making room to reach his hand between their bodies, wrapping around Matt’s cock. It didn’t take long until Matt was arching his back, muscles tensing as he came over James’s hand. James gritted his teeth and picked up his pace, fucking into Matt hard and fast before following him over the edge.

Matt allowed himself to drift as they lay there, both of them breathing heavily, James’s nose pressed into the crease of his neck, his breath warm on Matt’s shoulder. One of Matt’s hands was splayed across James’s back, one of his ankles was hooked over James’s calf, and he couldn’t help but to tilt his head forward slightly and smell James’s hair. It didn’t smell like much - just clean with a hint of almonds; nothing like Matt was used to - but it was a comforting smell, soft and warm and familiar, and Matt let it wash over him. 

The knock at the door made him jump.

“Man, you know I hate this more than you do, but you need to put some clothes on and get out here right now.”

“What the fuck, Sam?” James shouted without moving. “I swear to god I’m going to -” 

“Murder me in my sleep. I know, alright. This isn’t the time for your shit. There’s somebody outside and…” Samual’s voice faltered, and Matt could feel James tense. “And he says he knows Tony.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hides]


	6. Six

_ Matt didn’t recognize the trap for what it was until it was too late. _

James was untangled from the bed, throwing on jeans, and heading to the door faster than Matt could process what was happening. By the time Matt even realized that James was moving he was out the door, shirt in hand. Matt sat up groggily, trying to get his bearings.  _ There’s somebody outside.  _ They’d been alone for so long, just the three of them, that it took a moment for Matt’s brain to make sense of the words.  _ There’s somebody outside, and he says he knows Tony.  _

_ Who the fuck is Tony? _

Matt’s knees wobbled slightly as he stood, retrieving his clothes, missing the opportunity to bask in the afterglow. He stood still for a moment, gazing longingly at the bed, considering the pros and cons of climbing back into it. The bed was warm and smelled like James, and certainly James would be back… there couldn’t really be someone outside. This was their corner of hell; nobody else belonged there.

Still, Matt knew it was important that, whatever was happening, he be a part of it. He dressed as quickly as he could, smoothed down his hair, and followed the path that James had taken to the front of the house.

Matt blinked at the tableau before him. James and Samuel were talking to a third man - a very strange looking man dressed in blue pants, a blue coat, and a red cape. His hair was dark, except where it was greying around the temples, and he had a severe goatee. They were far enough away that Matt could see their animated conversation, but he couldn’t hear them (and  _ fuck,  _ he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get used to that.) James and Samuel seemed to agree to something, and then the man was doing something with his hands. Matt blinked, trying to clear his vision. It didn’t make sense. The man was moving his hands in a circle. As he moved, the air his hands passed over began to glow, creating what looked like a golden ring of sparks. In the center of the ring, the landscape changed - no longer the swirling red but instead a dull grey, dusty and hard. 

Matt was sure he saw it. It wasn’t his imagination. For just a moment, James turned and looked back at him, a pained expression on his face.

Then all three men stepped through the ring. The ring closed behind them, then vanished completely. 

Matt was alone.

In Hell.

He stared at the empty space where James and Samuel had just stood, then left the protection of the cabin on its fake plot of green and nonsensical garden. He walked to where he thought they had been, although the sameness of the landscape meant there was really no way to know for sure. He held his hand out against the nothingness, wondered if he would have been able to feel something before, to sense what had happened. He looked back to the house. Nothing had changed. He half expected it to be gone, but it was still there, brown and green looking utterly wrong against a backdrop of swirling red.

With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, Matt walked back towards it, let himself in the front door, sat down on the couch. 

Time passed. Matt wasn’t sure how much. The landscape and the light outside of the window never changed. It could have been hours. It could have been months. Matt’s stomach growled, then stopped, and he wondered briefly if the house could sustain him without his moving. Did he even need to eat? To drink? The question was fleeting; the answer was inconsequential. 

Matt dozed. He opened his eyes. He dozed again.

Oddly enough, the first thing he noticed was the smell, and the fact that it was wrong. 

New York City had a smell all its own. There were the normal city smells, of course - car exhaust and garbage, food carts and rat droppings (and bird droppings, and dog droppings… and all too often people droppings), cigarette smoke, people who wore too much perfume, people who didn’t wear enough deodorant. No matter where he was in New York, he could always smell the salt of the ocean to the east, and the Hudson to the west. He could place where he was by the nearby restaurants - Fried Dumpling and Bo Ky, Gunbae and Arcade Bakery, Augustine and Xi’An. 

Now, though, there was less. The Hudson smelled cleaner, the car exhaust less thick, even the omnipresent stench of garbage left sitting out in the sun was lessened. And there was something else, too. Decay, but a different kind. The kind Matt usually only got when he stepped into a warehouse or apartment that had been abandoned too long. The kind that didn’t belong in New York City.

The second thing he noticed was the feel. He was kneeling on the concrete, his hands out in front of him like he’d tripped and caught himself. The sidewalk under his hands was rough and cracked, uncared for, with a few weeds poking through under his palm. The air felt different, too. Cleaner, but also still - missing the random puffs of hot air that always seemed to be stirring it from apartment vents and subway grates. 

The third thing he noticed was the sound. Fewer cars on the street and trains rumbling underground, but more voices. So many more voices. Confused and excited and bewildered and scared. Shouting. Crying. Most of them happy. Some of them not.

Matt sat on the ground, mere feet away from the steps of the courthouse, taking it all in.

It wasn’t until then that he realized he couldn’t see.

“Mr. Murdock? Mr. Murdock is that you?” 

Matt felt for his cane and retrieved it from where it had fallen by his side. He grasped it firmly as he forced himself to stand, the world spinning around him. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. We musta’ passed out.” Matt could feel the guard looking around. He could hear the guard’s heart pounding. “Something bad happened here.”

That much was obvious. Matt honed his senses and felt abandoned vehicles, crashed and half buried in garbage and leaves. Most of the offices in the buildings around them were abandoned. The buildings themselves were in need of repair. “How long?”

“What?”

“How long?” Matt repeated. “How long were we gone?”

“I didn’t… we didn’t go anywhere. Just… passed out? A few minutes I think.” 

Matt turned his head sharply. The guard’s heartbeat hadn’t changed. He wasn’t lying or, at least not intentionally so. “You didn’t go anywhere else? In between?”

“In between what?” The guard took a step back from him. “We were here, you looked like you were about to take off running, and then I… I woke up I guess. Like I said, I must have passed out. But it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.”

“Tell me what you see, then.” Matt gestured around them. “Does it look like we were passed out for just a few minutes?”

“I… we…” the guard took a step back, and Matt could hear his heartbeat starting to rise as panic started to set in. “Did you go somewhere else?”

Matt opened his mouth wordlessly, then shut it again. What had happened? What had he seen? How could he begin trying to explain…? “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened, either. I… I need to get home.”

The thought struck him, and it struck him hard. Home. He needed to get home. His apartment. His suit. Things were wrong, and he needed to be in a position to help. He started walking.

“You sure you’re ok?” the guard called after him.

“No,” Matt called back, and he kept walking.

“Hey! Hey, wait! Come on!” Matt turned as he felt the guard’s hand on his shoulder. “Look, I know you don’t need any help. I get it. I do. But things are…” the guard looked around. “Thinks look pretty fucked up right now. At least let me hail you a cab.” 

Matt considered it for a moment, then nodded his agreement.

“Thank you.” 

In the end, Matt was thankful he’d accepted the offer. He hadn’t yet been able to figure out how to tell the difference between a cab and a regular car, and according to the guard there were significantly fewer cabs on the road then usual. He let the cab driver fill him in on what had happened, listening out the window when they stopped or slowed.  _ Five years.  _ There was no way he’d been gone for five years. James had been meticulous about his calendar - something about having lost enough time already - and they’d been in that house for just over six months.

Still.... that house. Nothing in that house had ever made sense. Was it possible that time had been wrong, too?

Half the population. Five years.

No wonder New York felt like it had been through a war.

It was a miracle, that’s what everyone was saying, and people were ecstatic. Still, Matt could hear the conflicts starting already. A man returning to an apartment that was no longer his, a woman returning to find her husband had remarried, a couple being greeted by a daughter that had been raised by someone else and didn’t recognize them.

It was going to be a lot of work to sort out, both for Matt Murdock and for Daredevil. 

Matt took the stairs to his apartment two at a time, doing his best to block out the sounds and sensations around him. It was distracting - overwhelming. So much joy and so much pain, so much confusion, all happening at once. He tried not to think about the fact that his apartment was likely no longer his.  _ What would he find? Where would his suit be? Who would know who he was… _

He pushed the thoughts aside. There would be time to deal with them later. Now he just needed to get to his apartment and assess the situation. 

All apartment buildings smelled similar to some extent - cheap carpet and industrial strength cleaner. The indescribable smell of too many bodies in too small of a space. The co-mingling of food smells. This was the same, but each tenant brought their own contributions, and these Matt could sense were different as he climbed the stairs. The same issues he’d heard on the way over were being echoed here. It seemed like little Sadie Mannion had disappeared, while her moms and younger… now older… brother had stayed behind. The poor girl must have been about three and was obviously terrified. On the second floor, Matt could hear an argument between Mr. Schaden and a woman he didn’t know. He was accusing her of being a burglar and, while the woman was staying calm and trying to explain, Mr. Schaden was extremely hard of hearing and didn’t seem especially interested in trying to understand.

Matt’s building had been a warehouse before it had been apartments, and the scents of industry still lingered there. Motor oil and sulfur, spent acids, solvent, formaldehyde and resin. His roof access brought its own smells, gravel and tar, cigarette smoke and bird shit. As he neared his door, he smelled his favorite whiskey. He smelled his leather couch. He smelled Karen and gunpowder and a dog.

There was no one inside, and his key still fit the lock, but it was clear before he opened the door that this was no longer his apartment. It was empty, but the scents of a life being lived were unmistakable. Karen may have changed her shampoo but she still made her coffee the same - a little burnt and a little bitter. Foggy didn’t live there, but enough of his scent was diffused throughout the apartment for Matt to tell he visited regularly. They’d cooked spaghetti the night before, with fresh garlic and canned tomatoes, topped with pecorino and not parmesan. The three plates in the drying rack, along with the lingering scent of Foggy’s favorite cheap red wine, let Matt know how recently Foggy had been there. The third person…

Matt gritted his teeth and flared his nostrils. It was fine. If half the population really had disappeared, there must have been chaos. What he perceived during his cab ride, along with what the driver told him and snippets of overheard conversations, told him everything he needed to know. The city wouldn’t have been safe. He was thankful someone had been looking out for Karen and Foggy while he was gone. Still…

He heard their voices when they were just over a block away. All three of them. It was awkward, the standing and waiting, knowing that they were coming when they didn’t know he was there. It was intrusive. Invasive. He knew that. 

He didn’t block them out.

“What if he’s not there? Then what will we do?” Karen’s voice was worried and tired. More tired than it usually was, and it was usually pretty damn tired. Karen had been through a lot in her life; Matt knew this. Some of it he was aware of, some of it he’d been with her for, some was hers alone. He always figured she’d tell him someday, when she was ready, but now…

_ Could it really have been five years? _

“He’ll be there.” Foggy’s voice was calm and reasonable as always. He sounded older which, Matt supposed, made sense. He’d gotten better at lying. His forced confidence and casualness was almost believable.

“And if he’s not?”

“Then we’ll split up and find him.” Oddly enough, it was Frank’s voice that had changed the most. He hadn’t given up smoking, but he’d cut back significantly. His voice was less gravely, his throat less raw. And there was a tenderness there that Matt hadn’t heard before. A gentleness that surprised him. A large, solid dog padded alongside them, unleashed.

“Ok, but what if we...”

“Karen,” Foggy interrupted. “He was on his way to court when the decimation happened. They’re saying that everyone came back right where they disappeared. Odds are he poofed back onto the subway, got his bearings, and headed back home. He’s probably there listening to us and laughing at us right now. Hey Buddy!”

Foggy didn’t believe anything he was saying, and Matt could hear a jolt of pain in Foggy’s voice when he called out, but all of that was covered up nicely for Karen’s sake. 

They walked for a while in silence.

“I just worry about him,” Karen practically whispered as they entered the building. “If he’s not here…”

Frank scoffed. “Don’t be like that. If there’s one person we don’t have to worry about taking care of himself, it’s Red. Always knew he’d be back; sonofabitch is too goddamned stubborn to get himself killed for good.”

Matt couldn’t help but smile. They were in the building now, and Matt could hear the thinly veiled hopefulness in Frank’s voice. Frank wanted him to hear. Frank hoped that Matt was there to hear. Sure, it was probably just for Karen’s sake, but it was still a long cry from the days of Matt being chained to a rooftop.

They climbed the stairs in silence, hearts pounding in their chests, and when they’d reached the top floor Matt stood and walked towards the front door. He waited. Karen turned a key in the lock.  She smelled like lilacs and fresh rain and Frank and panic.  Matt held out his arms. The door opened.

“Surprise.”

Karen let a squeal and launched herself into his arms, and Matt allowed himself to hold her more tightly than he generally would have. She felt warm. Solid. She’d put on muscle since the last time he held her, in her shoulders and back, her hands and her forearms. It was a strength pattern Matt knew; one formed by hours at the shooting ra nge. Frank’s smell  was on her skin and her clothes. 

“We missed you. What happened? ” Karen took his face in her hands and held it gently. “Are you ok?”

“I…” Matt faltered. “I’m ok. The rest… I’m not sure what happened. I was here. I was at the courthouse, and then…”

Matt didn’t know how to explain where he was, and he didn’t know if he wanted to. Had it all been a dream? Had his mind created that house, those people, as a way to protect him? He couldn’t talk about it. Not yet. He needed time. 

“I’m fine,” he repeated, only slightly more convincingly. 

Next to Karen, Foggy’s lips twitched into a smile. “I’m glad you’re back.” He held his arms wide, and Matt switched from Karen to Foggy, embracing the man who was his best friend and brother. 

“Five years, huh?” Matt asked, as he pulled back with his best wry smile. “Probably made partner at a big fancy law firm without me here to hold you back.”

Foggy laughed once, honest and real, a sound that always took Matt back to their days in college. “As if! I mean, I had something going on and then my partner just up and vanished. I’ve been holding down the fort by myself ever since.”

Karen gave a disgruntled snort.

“Ok, maybe not  _ all  _ by myself.” Foggy appraised him. “You sure you’re ok, pal?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure. Just need to get my bearings.” He cocked his head to the side, listening to the world outside the apartment. “Everyone seems really worked up.”

“Of course everyone is worked up. Matt. Matt! You were all here and then,  _ poof _ . You were gone! Dissolve into dust or some shit. And then  _ poof _ ! You’re back again. It’s a big deal.”

“Yeah.” Matt listened harder to the voices around them, in the apartment building and throughout Hell’s Kitchen. Over and over he was hearing the same story; people saying that no time had passed at all. Like they hadn’t even known they had been gone.

Nothing like what he’d experienced.

“So what was it like?” Karen’s voice pulled him away from his concentration. 

“It was… I…” Matt searched for the words.

“It was probably a lot,” Frank interrupted Matt’s stuttering. “Red’s probably real worn out, ain’t ya, Red?”

Matt nodded wordlessly.

“Then we should get out of your hair. Let you rest. This is your apartment, after all.” 

“Is it?” Matt asked, confused. “You two have been living here, though, haven’t you?” He gestured between Frank and Karen. 

There was a tense silence, which Frank interrupted. “Housing has been… unusual over the past five years. Yeah, we’ve kept the place up, stayed in it to make sure nobody took it over, but we’ve got somewhere else to go too. The apartment is yours, and it’s just how you left it. Or… the important stuff is, at least.” Frank nodded towards the closet where Matt could smell his suit still resting, concealed in his trunk. “Although you might want to stay off the streets for a while. Daredevil is gone for five years then comes back tonight? Well, you’ve just narrowed down potential suspects by 50% of the population.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I should rest, anyway.”

“We could stay,” Karen volunteered. “Make you dinner or…”

“The man just said he was tired.” Frank cut her off, and Matt was surprisingly thankful. It wasn’t that he was tired, exactly. It was just too much. His senses were buzzing and his nerves felt fried. He needed quiet. He needed to be alone and to meditate and to try and figure out what had happened to him. “Just let me use the can and we’ll be out of your hair.”

Karen made a sound like she was going to protest, but Frank must have shot her a look because she immediately shut her mouth. 

“I’ll hang out,” Foggy added. “In case you need something. Maybe I’ll take a nap on the couch. I could use some extra rest myself.”

“Foggy, you don’t have…” 

“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t have to do, Murdock. Frank’s right. If you go out tonight, you’ll make it that much easier for someone to connect the dots between Matt Murdock and Daredevil. And honestly, none of us trusts you to not go out, so I’m going to stay and babysit you. There’s no arguing. Besides,” he reached out a hand and clamped Matt firmly on the shoulder. “You may have seen me earlier today, but I haven’t seen you for five years. I’ve missed you.”

Matt smiled. “I’ve missed you too, buddy.”

Frank nodded once, curtly, then retreated to the bathroom. Matt did his best to politely tune him out, so it took a moment before he realized that Frank was talking under his breath.

“...but it’s obvious that something else happened. They’re worried enough that they’re not saying anything now, but if you lie to them again, Red. I swear to god. They’ve been through enough; they don’t deserve it. These last five years have been hell, and they don’t need anything else. Take some time to figure out your shit, but they deserve to know the truth of whatever happened to you.”

Frank flushed the toilet and washed his hands, then opened the door and walked to Karen’s side.

“We’ll be back.” Karen’s voice broke just a little as she spoke, and then she stepped forward and embraced him again. “I really, really missed you, Matt.”

He smiled at her, then Frank was guiding them out the door and they were gone. 

“You don’t have to stay,” Matt said, turning to Foggy. “I’m alright.”

“I know you are,” Foggy answered. His soft leather messenger bag had been leaning against the breakfast bar, and he picked it up before sitting down at the kitchen table. “I’ve got work to do and I don’t feel like going into the office anyway. It’s kind of embarrassing, but I’ve gotten used to working right here. The office always felt too quiet and empty without you around. It was nice to be in your space. I’d… I’d talk to you sometimes. Ask you what you’d do. If I was here, it sometimes felt like you were answering me.”

He wasn’t lying.

Matt forced a smile. “Ok.” 

They weren’t wrong. He was anxious to head out as Daredevil, but Frank was right too (as much as Matt hated to admit it.) If Daredevil showed up now… On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t make much difference if it was now or a month from now; if he’d been gone five years…

Matt’s head hurt, and he had to admit to himself that he’d gotten used to the quiet in… wherever he was. If he’d even really been anywhere. The sounds of Foggy working were familiar and comforting, and Matt focused on them as he settled into his bed, ignoring that it smelled of Karen and Frank, and drifted to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely adored the guesses about who the mystery guest was on the last chapter! I hope nobody was disappointed that I was JUST BUILDING ANGST!! 
> 
> Thank you all for the wonderful comments. Please keep them coming. It is very cold and very snowy here in Wisconsin, and I need all the serotonin you can help my body create <3


	7. Seven

Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff were gone. Steve Rogers was old. A space alien named Thanos did something with some stones from outer space that lead to half of the world’s population disappearing. The Avengers did something with the same stones to bring everyone back. The general population just tried to cary on as best they could.

There was a new Iron Man, or Iron Heart as she were going by. Matt was shocked when he got close enough to realize that it was a young girl. There was some debate over who should carry Captain America’s Shield. The official word was that it now belonged to a man named John Walker, a retired Army soldier who reported directly to the government and was calling himself US Agent, but the Avengers didn’t work with him and, while they never spoke out about it publicly, Matt had overheard several of them calling Falcon “Cap.” 

Matt still preferred to work alone, or occasionally team up with Danny and Luke (who had also disappeared in what was now being called “The Blip”) and Jessica (who had stayed behind), but it was impossible to avoid the Avengers completely. Yes, the return was seen as a blessing, but it brought with it many challenges. Food and manufacturing supply chains, destroyed by the loss of half of the population, had been rebuilt to support significantly fewer people and couldn’t keep up with the sudden growth. Much housing, abandoned by its residents for five years, was no longer habitable. Jobs that some remembered being at yesterday no longer existed. The banking system had collapsed. Mental illness and suicide rates soared. 

Things were, to put it lightly, bad. 

It was Spider-Man who first approached Daredevil, seeking him out on a dark rooftop one night after Matt had fought with a man in some sort of robot-suit with legs hundreds of feet long. Matt was so busy assessing to his injuries and wondering  _ what the actual fuck  _ that he didn’t sense Spider-Man coming until he was right there.

In the end, Spidey wasn’t asking for much. Matt agreed to expand his patrol area down to 14th St. and over to 6th Ave., to meet with his Avengers point person once a week, and to be available to help in the event of any major incursions. In return, he had the backing of the Avengers and, with it, a small level of legitimacy. Yes, he was still a vigilante, and vigilantism was still illegal, but he was a vigilante who had the support of the Avengers. It wasn’t enough to keep him out of the Daily Bugle, but it was enough to keep the cops of his back.

His Avengers point person ended up being Hawkeye, AKA: Clint Barton, a neurotic and over caffeinated man who was always showing up to their meetings late and covered in scrapes and bruises. He was a disaster, but he always showed up and Matt found himself growing enamored with the idiot. He’d never admit it to Clint, but he knew what it felt like to be just a normal guy trying to keep up with enhanced heroes and villains. 

The first major incursion came just over eight months after Matt and his half of the population reappeared, in the form of a tyrannical despot who believed that he, along with what Clint described as “an army of goddamned killer robots,” would do a better job bringing stability back than the world leaders were doing. And so, despite his better judgement, Matt found himself practically vibrating out of his skin on a plane to Latveria with Hawkeye, War Machine, Spider-Man, and a man named Scott. 

“You don’t need to wear the mask, you know. We’re all friends here.” Spider-Man’s voice was deafening through the earpiece Matt was wearing, yet somehow still managed to practically get lost in the thunderous noises of the plane. They were going fast - too fast - and while commercial airplanes were bad, they were at least designed to muffle some of the sound. The open spaces and stark interior of what they’d referred to as a Quinjet, on the other hand, amplified the vibrations caused not only by the traditional jet engines, but also by the dual turbines located in both wings.

Matt didn’t answer, but instead clenched down tighter on his armrests.

“He won’t.” Matt could barely stop himself from wincing when Hawkeye piped in from where he was sitting next to Scott in the cockpit. “How long have we been meeting now, Double-D? Six months? The guy still doesn’t trust me.” 

“To be fair, I’ve known you for a lot longer than that, and I don’t trust you either.” War-Machine’s voice roared through Matt’s ears. 

Clint made an offended noise, then turned towards the man sitting next to him.

“I mean, I definitely trust you to get a good cup of coffee?” Scott spoke like the words were a question.

“I wouldn’t. I’ve tasted what this man drinks straight out of the pot.” 

Matt tried to focus on War Machine. Of everyone in the plane, he was the most interesting, and he didn’t make Matt feel like his senses were twisting upside-down and inside-out. Clint was fine, but Matt had memorized everything about him months ago: the whine of his hearing aids, the flex of his muscles, the crinkle of the bandaids that were inevitably plastered to his skin. Spider-Man was different - clearly enhanced, clearly a mutate - but Matt had gotten fairly used to him as well. They didn’t team up regularly, but a few long nights on rooftops listening to the teen chatter incessantly were enough for Matt to learn everything about him that he needed to know. Scott was… Matt wasn’t sure. It hurt to focus on him too much. It wasn’t him, specifically, but the suit he’d changed into after they’d taken off. Something about it made Matt’s stomach feel like it was doing summersaults. So War Machine it was.

War Machine also seemed to be a normal person under his suit of armor, and the armor itself wasn’t all that interesting. Some sort of carbon composite, it was equipped with guns and blasters, and a computer inside that occasionally Matt could hear the man speaking with. It was the ARC reactor itself, however - situated inside the chest plate - that Matt couldn’t help but focus on. Strings of plasma, scalding hot and vibrating at a frequency Matt had never experienced before, swirled within the ring of the reactor. Electromagnets pulsed, keeping the plasma on track, directing the energy back in on itself and powering the suit. And yet, somehow, the entire thing was completely silent. If Matt focused his senses on the very center, it was like slipping into a void...

“Isn’t that right, Double D?”

Matt jerked his head up at the sound of Hawkeye’s voice assaulting his inner ear. 

“Double D?”

“I’m sorry…” he shook his head, attempting to clear out the static and focus on the group as a whole. “I got lost in my own thoughts.” 

Matt heard a slight hitch in Hawkeye’s breath before he continued. “I was just telling them that you took on that guy calling himself Bullseye no problem. Didn’t even break a sweat.”

Matt laughed. “Oh, I broke more than a sweat, that’s for sure.” He stilled, then shook his head slowly. “Dex is… something’s been done to him. His body. His bones specifically. He hasn’t always been like that, and I doubt we’ve heard the last of him.”

  
“Well that’s ominous.” There was a moment of silence, then Hawkeye spoke again. “Hey, man. You want to come co-pilot with me for a while? Give Scott a break?”

“I don’t need a…” Scott started to protest, before Hawkeye interrupted him with a swift kick to the shin. “Right. Right, a break. Got it.” Scott swayed a little as he stood, then walked towards the back of the plane where everyone else was seated. Matt felt the muscles of his face twitch up into a smile. “All yours, pal.”

Matt didn’t want to move. He’d already noticed and decided he didn’t care that he was the only one strapped into the Quinjet’s lightly upholstered seats. He felt every air pocket, every minor course correction, every time the air currents hit the side of the plane and made the titanium, steel, and aluminum shudder, each with their own resonance. To stand? To walk all the way to the front of the deck? The concept seemed completely unreasonable. 

He clenched and unclenched his fists, then unbuckled the harness and walked purposefully towards the front of the plane.

“You don’t have to buckle in,” Hawkeye said as Matt clicked the harness into place. “I promise, these Quinjets are extremely safe. They practically fly themselves. Plus I’m a really good pilot.” 

Matt adjusted the straps so they were snug against his chest. Even through his suit, he could feel the rough nylon.

Hawkeye stared at him. “You ok?”

“Yeah.” 

“You sure? Because you don’t seem…”

“I don’t like flying.” Matt gritted his teeth, then attempted to relax his shoulders.

“You going to be alright to fight?” Hawkeye asked. 

“Yes.”

“Alright.” The two men sat in silence for a moment. The pressurized air inside the cabin pressed down on Matt’s skin. “You want a lesson on how to fly a plane? Maybe if you understood how it worked--”

“No thank you.” 

“Alright.”

Matt took the ensuing silence as a dismissal, carefully unbuckled his harness, and returned to his seat. He felt War Machine move to fill the seat he had vacated, their loud voices immediately pouring through the headset as they discussed plans for the upcoming fight. Matt’s sensitive fingers easily found the small switch on the earpiece, and he switched it off before shifting his attention inward and attempting to meditate.

***

“Hey.” Spider-Man’s voice was soft in Matt’s ear, and his hand was warm on Matt’s arm. “You okay?”

Matt inhaled sharply at the surprise as he returned his attention to his surroundings. They were descending. War Machine was gone…  _ no _ , Matt realized with a start.  _ He was flying a quarter of a mile beneath them.  _

“Rhodey is scoping out the terrain, looking for any hostiles and finding us a good place to land,” Spider-Man said, as if he could read Matt’s mind. 

Matt prayed that he couldn’t. He reached up to turn his earpiece on, and the sound tore through him. He could hear War Machine flying through the air, the sound of his thrusters, the whipping of the wind against his suit. Matt immediately turned the earpiece off again. “I can’t use this,” he said quietly to Spider-Man. 

“What? Why not? Is it broken?”

“No, it’s just I…” Matt stumbled over his words. He wanted to trust Spider-Man. He did. As annoying as the kid could be sometimes, Matt genuinely liked him. He’d considered striking up a conversation before, had even offered - as Matt Murdock - to represent Peter Parker pro bono after the Bugle had attacked him (Peter didn’t know who Matt was, and had selected Jennifer Walters as representation, which had been an excellent choice). Still, he was hesitant to reveal too much identifying information about himself. Nothing but trouble could come of that. On the other hand… “I need my ears. I… Hawkeye can see really well, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well I can hear really well. And if all I’m hearing is everyone screaming at each other…” Matt shook his head. “I’m going to be useless to all of you.”

Spider-Man thought about it for a moment, then nodded his head. “Alright. But keep it with you. You need it to be on in order for us to hear you. When we get back, I’ll make sure you get your own special headset that is outgoing only.” 

Matt removed the earpiece and placed it into a small, secure pouch on his belt. “Thank you.” 

“Thank you for trusting me.” Spider-Man’s voice was small and a little insecure, and Matt quickly cataloged anything negative he might have ever said or implied about him. He was just a kid, afterall. Matt could do better. He committed to doing better. 

“So what’s the plan? I wasn’t paying attention at all.” 

Under his mask, Spider-Man smiled. “Well…” Carefully, he broke down the plan for Matt - how they’d get into Doomstadt and to the Royal Palace, how they’d get past Doom’s robotic guards, how they would take Doom into custody, and what they’d need to be on the lookout for. Falcon, the Winter Soldier, and someone called The Wasp were meeting them there. Falcon and War Machine were supplying air support, Scott and The Wasp were sneaking in to gather additional intelligence (how Scott was supposed to handle that, Matt wasn’t about to ask. He’d personally witnessed the man spill FOUR bottles of water into his own lap on the short flight), the Winter Soldier would be guarding the perimeter, and the rest of them were expected to go in and take Doom. 

***

Everything went to plan until the moment it didn’t. Matt couldn’t help kicking himself. He should have noticed. He should have! Sure, Doom’s palace was filled with strange technology, but the crackling, rectangular energy field was definitely the strangest. 

When the corridors began to fill with robots, all of whom were encased in metal suits and donning capes just like Doom’s, Matt could feel the Avengers’ confusion spike. “It’s him!” he shouted, pointing at the real Doom who was backing away through the crowd. But nobody was close, and the roar of metallic feet and limbs drowned him out. Without thinking, Matt ducked into the corridor as he searched for the earpiece. 

Doom’s footfalls echoed through the stone passages, but Matt followed him easily as he slid the earpiece into his ear and flipped it on. He froze as the sounds of the battle overwhelmed him. “Hello?” he whispered into the earpiece. “Hello, can anyone hear me? Hawkeye? Spidey?” 

Static and the clash of weapons were his only reply. “Fuck,” Matt muttered, turning off the earpiece and narrowing his senses on Doom in front of him. The man was headed towards the energy field. “Fuck!” he said again, a bit louder as the rectangle seemed to pulse and fluctuate as Doom tapped his fingers across what appeared to be a control panel. Matt switched the earpiece back on and broke into a run as he shouted, uncaring of the way he knew his voice would travel. “We’ve got a problem! The real Doom is in the North East corner of the castle. Send backup immediately. Repeat, send back---” Electricity tore through him. Matt flew back, his head banging against the stone wall behind him. He felt something warm trickle down the back of his head. He smelled the iron of his own blood. For just a moment, he thought he heard the pounding of feet and the whir of something metallic. He thought he felt the unmistakable ripple of vibranium; he thought he smelled almonds. And then, blissfully, everything went dark. 

*******

“We need to get his mask off!”

“No! He wouldn’t want that!”

“Listen, kid! I like the guy as much as you do, but it sounds like we don’t have a choice!”

Bucky let the voices of Sam, Peter, and Clint wash over him as he focused on flying the Quinjet. The man in all red was lying unconscious on a medical table behind him as the three fought over what to do next. Doom was securely locked in a vibranium cell in the ship’s hold. 

“There has to be a choice!  _ Has _ to be!”

Peter’s voice was shrill - panicked even. Bucky wasn’t sure why the kid cared so much. As far as he knew, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen was Clint’s responsibility. Maybe that had changed. He hadn’t really had time to keep up.

Sam sighed, and even with his back turned Bucky knew that he hadn’t stopped working, unbuckling straps and cutting away red nylon and kevlar. Devil Boy had been in bad shape. He’d been an idiot for thinking he could take Doom on alone, rushing in without support…

“Ok. What if we cut away the back of his cowl, but I leave the mask in place, ok? Just so I can see what I’m working with. No promises though… If I have to check for a concussion… Oh, shit. There’s a lot of blood back here...”

Bucky checked the dials in front of him, and changed their altitude slightly. The least he could do was give Sam as smooth a ride as possible, especially if Peter was going to make saving this guy’s life more difficult than it needed to be. The force of Doom’s blasts were nothing to mess around with, and Bucky couldn’t help but wonder if the guy was going to make it. Maybe, if he was enhanced. He’d seen the guy fight, from up above where he’d been set up with a sniper rifle. He was a good fighter. Strong, but not excessively so. Seemed more like a regular guy with training, and less like someone with superpowers. Still, there was something about the way he moved… something familiar. 

Bucky set the autopilot, rose to stretch his legs, and then turned…

“What the hell!” 

Bucky hardly heard Sam’s voice, even as Sam shouted and tried to push him aside. He didn’t budge. He couldn’t specifically remember moving away from the controls. He wasn’t sure how he got to the side of the gurney. All he knew was that he was now staring down at the same scarred chest that had haunted his dreams for the past eight months. He only vaguely noticed Clint cursing him out and saying something about autopilots not being infallible before quickly moving to sit down in the abandoned pilot's chair. He reached out his right hand and stroked it carefully across the dark purple bruise blooming on the man’s ribs. Eyes wide and wild, he turned to Sam. “What do you mean there’s a lot of blood? Blood where? Sam! You need to do something. You need to do something right now. What’s wrong with him? What can we do.” 

“Jesus, man,” Sam moved to the other side of the gurney, glaring at Bucky. “What the hell has gotten into you?” He turned. “I’m sorry, Pete. I get that you want to respect the guy’s privacy, but I need to check his pupillary reflexes…”

“It won’t matter,” Bucky said, even as Sam was pulling the mask away, even as Sam’s hand froze and his breath caught in his chest. 

“What do you mean it won’t matter?” Peter asked, staring down at the darkly stubbled face lying in front of them.

“He’s blind,” Sam said, eyes focused on the face in front of him, hands continuing to work gently but rapidly, seeking out wounds and assessing injuries, even as he spoke to Bucky. “Holy shit, man. It’s him, isn’t it. You really found him.” 


	8. Eight

Matt knew hospitals. The beeping of machines, the smell of antiseptic, the coughs and groans and cries of patients. Hospitals were loud noises and hard corners and the scent of sickness and bleach everywhere. The sheets were rough and the beds were hard, and the food was inedible. 

This one was quieter than most. The sheets were a little better, too. 

At the foot of his bed, Foggy stirred. 

Matt froze. 

_ That isn’t Foggy. _

The single piece of information crystalized everything for him. That wasn’t Foggy. Foggy wouldn’t bring him to a hospital. This wasn’t a regular hospital. He’d been fighting with the Avengers. Doom had been getting away. Matt had tried to stop him and gone down…

Matt had gone down hard.

The Winter Soldier was sleeping at the foot of his bed. There was nobody else it could be. Enhanced muscles, vibranium arm... 

Matt’s suit was gone. His mask was gone. He was completely exposed. 

Matt lay as still as possible, focusing his senses, trying to sharpen the radar-like image in his mind’s eye. He was in a large, well ventilated room. The walls were smooth - too smooth in some places - panels coated in some sort of plastic-like polymer. The wires behind and the faint buzzing of electricity told him that they were some sort of display, but there were no distinguishable buttons or dials. The bed he was lying on was big for a hospital bed - a full, or maybe even a queen. He was the only patient in the room. 

He pushed his senses out, mapping as much of the building as he could. The walls were filled with webs of fiber-optic cables, pulsing and humming. Beyond the walls he could feel a large building, wide and open, filled with glass and metal and very few people. A few gathered in what seemed to be a common area. He could hear the sounds of the television playing, but he couldn’t sense a screen. Others gathered in what was obviously a gym, the heat of enhanced bodies burning hotter than others. Outside it was raining gently. Matt could feel the drops splash against the building’s many windows, echoing through the empty spaces. He breathed with the rhythm of it, taking in the smell of the air around him. 

The hospital room was clean, but the scents of the people who’d been there before lingered. Coffee and green tea and something similar to a strong beer. Pizza and Thai food and hints of paprika. The Winter Soldier’s hair smelled faintly of almonds. 

It was a familiar smell. 

Matt felt his own heart start to beat a bit faster.

At the foot of the bed, the Winter Soldier sat up abruptly. “You’re awake.”

The Winter Soldier’s voice was familiar too. Matt tried not to flinch. He’d fallen into this trap before. A soft voice, sad, with a hint of what he now suspected might have been a Brooklyn accent. Matt had spent months stopping strangers on the street, hoping they were James, before giving up. Having his sight when they’d been… wherever they’d been… meant that the rest of his senses hadn’t been as focused as they could have been. He heard James everywhere. Maybe James didn’t even exist. Maybe the whole thing had been a dream - his brain trying to keep him sane. Nobody else reported seeing anything during the blip. 

Matt kept his eyes closed, but he didn’t try to pretend he was asleep. His voice was cold. “You took my mask off.”

“I… yes. We had to. Sam… Falcon. He thought you might have a concussion. He wanted to check your eyes. I’m sorry.”

Something was wrong. The Winter Soldier was hesitating, anxious, unsure even. Matt frowned. “Do I have a concussion?” 

“No.. I mean, yes. A little. It’s not bad. You’re strong. Stronger than…”

The Winter Soldier swallowed hard. Matt could hear his heart pounding. His left arm was made out of Vibranium. Matt knew it was vibranium even if he’d never been around vibranium before. It was like a small black hole, drawing the vibrations from its own movements back in on itself. Matt thought about James, remembered him saying that he’d lost his arm and the house had brought it back for him. That he’d been a prisoner of war, tortured, traumatized, and that the house had taken that pain away too… That described the Winter Soldier, didn’t it? It had been his left arm...

Matt tried to clear the thought from his mind. It wasn’t helping. And anyway, the Winter Soldier hadn’t been named James, had he? He’d had one of those quirky names that nobody born after 1950 would have ever been given. Buddy or Buggy or something like that. Foggy would know. 

Matt wondered how long he’d been there. He wondered if Foggy was worrying about him. He tried not to let his inner turmoil show on his face. “I suppose you looked up who I am?”

The Winter Soldier flinched. His voice was rough when he spoke. “Obviously I didn’t have to.” 

Matt cocked his head to the side, listening. The words weren’t a lie, but there was something else there, too. Something that didn’t make any sense. If Matt didn’t know any better, he’d say the Winter Soldier was in distress. And what did he mean when he said  _ obviously.  _ Another memory of James flickered in his mind’s eye, standing in front of the sink, soap bubbles in his hair. “Am I being held here?”

There was another flinch accompanied by a spike in the Winter Soldier’s heart rate. “Of course not. We’re not… I’m not…” He sighed. “You can go whenever you’d like. I just… I’m sorry we had to take off your mask, but I thought you might be happy…”

“Happy?” Matt interrupted. “My anonymity is extremely important to me. Without it I could get disbarred. My partner could get disbarred. I don’t want to think about how many people could demand a retrial. And I’m supposed to be happy?”

“You think I’d let that happen?” The Winter Soldier's voice was elevated. His heart was racing. He was genuinely upset. “Nobody is going to talk. Nobody is going to say anything. I tried to stop him. I promise I did. The moment I saw your scars and I knew it was you, I tried to stop Sam from taking off your mask but he was already doing it. But Mike - ”

Matt felt like he’d been kicked in the chest.  _ “James?” _

James must have recognized the change in Matt's face, the look of shock and surprise, and interpreted it as anger because he changed his approach. His voice softened, even as he rose and began to pace. “I should have stopped Sam faster. I should have realized sooner. I was watching you fight and the way you moved… I didn’t let myself believe it. I’ve seen you everywhere since… I’ve been looking for you. I… do you know how many visually impaired lawyers named Mike there are in the tri-state area? Forty-seven. There are forty-seven visually impaired lawyers named Mike in the tri-state area, and somehow none of them are you. And then suddenly I’m sitting up in those rafters with fucking Clint Barton, and there’s this guy dressed in red leather wearing goddamned devil horns and he moves just like you, Mike. I’ve watched you move. I know how you fight. He moved just like you. But it couldn’t be, right? Because you told me you were a blind lawyer and why the fuck would a blind lawyer also be the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. It didn’t make any sense and I was afraid to get my hopes up. I shouldn’t have left that day. I should have come back and told you who I was, what was happening, but Dr. Strange showed up and he said that Thanos was going to destroy all of humanity if we didn’t leave right then and there and I…”

“It’s Matt.”

James stopped pacing. “What?”

“It’s Matt. My name. My name is Matt, not Mike. I… I didn’t trust you at first, and by the time I did… I was going to tell you. I was trying to figure out a way to tell you…”

“Matt?”

“Matthew Michael Murdock.” Matt held back a wince and forced a smile as he sat up and held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

James took Matt’s hand between both of his own and held it, not moving, not speaking.

“I looked for you too. I thought… I heard your voice everywhere at first.” James’s flesh hand was hot. Matt could feel his heart pulsing in the tips of his fingers. Matt swallowed hard. “I should have looked harder, too. I convinced myself it wasn’t real - that I’d dreamt you somehow. Made the whole thing up in my head. Now… just now. I thought… I wanted to believe it was you but I wouldn’t let myself.”

“You didn’t realize it was me??”

“No, I… When we were… wherever we were… James, I’m blind, but my other senses are enhanced. Sight, smell, sound, touch… that’s how I do what I do. The way things appear to me now is… it’s so different than it was. I’m thankful that I got to see you when I did, but this now…” Matt faltered, searching for the right word. “It’s different.” 

There was silence. Matt could feel and hear James’s heart pounding. His heavy breathing churned through the otherwise still air of the room. 

“If I would have known --”

“Is different bad?”

“What?”

“You said I was different and… God knows it’s true. I’m…” he gave a small gesture with his left hand, “different. But I need to know if different is bad.”

“What? No, James --” 

“Bucky.” 

“What?”

“It’s… My name is James. James Buchanan Barnes. But my friends all call me Bucky. You can call me Bucky, too. If you want… I didn’t trust you either.” 

Bucky pulled back as Matt tried to take his hand, and Matt frowned. “James. Bucky… you…” He leaned forward again, interlocking their fingers this time. Bucky’s left hand was cool against Matt’s skin. It was smooth and still. Matt traced his thumb across a fingertip and felt it absorb the heat and vibrations. In his mind’s eye, he traced the metal up to Bucky’s shoulder, where it was attached to a titanium cap. The titanium structure extended into Bucky’s shoulder blade and eventually his spine. It seemed much stronger than necessary to support the lightweight arm. Matt could hear Bucky’s shirt shifting over his skin where it met metal, and it was obvious the area was covered with scars. “You’re beautiful. You’re more beautiful like this than you were before, and if you would have asked me yesterday I would have told you that was impossible.” 

“Mike…”

“Matt.”

Bucky laughed. “Right. That’s going to take some getting used to.”

“I know the feeling, Bucky.”

Bucky smiled and pulled the chair over so he could sit down next to Matt’s head, guiding it back towards the pillow. “You shouldn’t be sitting up. Your injuries aren’t life threatening, but you still need to rest and recover.”

Matt thought about arguing but didn’t. He was fine. He would be fine, but the pillow felt nice against his head and he didn’t really want to move.  _ Bucky _ was close. His body was warm and his heartbeat was steady. Bucky scooted his chair closer, and Matt reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s getting long again.”

Bucky leaned into the touch. “I didn’t want to let anyone else touch it. I wasn’t ready to undo what you did.”

“I destroyed it,” Matt said with a soft laugh. “The house cut it.”

“You were still the last person to touch it. Matt…” Bucky bit his lower lip, and Matt felt the heat bloom as blood rushed to the spot under his skin. 

“Please,” Matt said softly.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” 

“I missed you. Fuck I missed you.” Bucky leaned forward and his lips brushed against Matt’s. They were soft and warm and tasted of coffee and raspberry flavored lip balm. Matt lifted up his head slightly, pushing his lips into Bucky’s, deepening the kiss…

“Oh, hell no!” 

Matt jumped at the voice, having been so lost in the feel of Bucky’s lips that he’d missed the other man enter the room.

“I mean, I’m glad that you two idiots found each other so that this one can stop moping around all day, but Devil Boy is injured and you’re both being monitored by a security camera, so for the sake of all the poor agents who work in this place please keep it in your respective pants for a little bit longer.”

Bucky pulled back, and Matt could practically feel him glaring.

“Careful, he might try to murder you in your sleep,” Matt said with a grin. “Is it still Samuel, or do you have a name change too?”

“It’s just Sam, and it’s good to see you again. I heard you introduce yourself as Matt over the monitors which, yes, is another reminder that people are watching you two and you need to keep it PG for fuck’s sake.”

“Sam… Well, at least it’s not as big of a change as James to Buck… Hey!” Matt tried to sit up and Bucky held a hand out to stop him. Matt moved to shrug him off before realizing that he was no match for a bionic hand… information that his mind filed away for another time. “You’re Falcon!” 

“And you’re Daredevil. We’re all just full of surprises, aren’t we?” Sam crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re well enough to be released, but the doctors asked me to come in here and make sure you’re not going to over exert yourself if we let you go.”

“Why would I--”

“We’ve all seen footage of Daredevil, man. And when even Clint says you’re reckless…”

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Bucky interrupted. “Make sure he’s taking it easy.”

“Yeah, just to be clear that doesn’t actually make me feel better.” Sam sighed heavily, then tapped on the pad he was holding in his hand. “I regret this already. I don’t suppose I could convince you to take your own room within the compound? There are plenty available.”

“I mean I…” Matt stuttered.

“You absolutely could,” Bucky said. “They’re very nice rooms. Big beds…”

“Is that what you’d prefer?” Matt asked.

“Yes, if you think you’d be more comfortable…” Bucky replied.

“No need for an extra room.” Matt smiled at Sam. “I’ll stay with him.” He winked at Bucky. “Enhanced senses mean I know when you’re lying.”

“You two fucking deserve each other,” Sam muttered. “I’d say ‘don’t make me regret this,’ but it’s already too late for that. You’re free to go.” He made one more note, then exited the room. 

“I brought you something to change into,” Bucky said, laying a stack of clothes in Matt’s lap. “We’re pretty casual here, but I figured you still wouldn’t want to be walking around with your ass hanging out.”

Matt frowned slightly. His fingers danced over the clothes in front of him: soft flannel pants and a lightweight cotton shirt with just a bit of stretch. They smelled like Bucky. “I really am ok. You don’t need to take care of me.”

“I know. Maybe I want to. Maybe I liked it. Maybe I missed out on the chance to see you all soft and warm and dressed up in my clothes, and I’m taking the opportunity now. You’re the mind reader. You tell me what’s true.”

“I’m not a mind reader,” Matt argued, even as he began to strip off the thin hospital gown and slip into Bucky’s clothes. “I just… many emotional reactions have physical ones too. Pores dilate, heart rate increases, pheromones are released…”

“And what are my pheromones telling you, sweetheart?”

Matt felt himself blushing. He stood and wobbled slightly, reaching back to hold onto the hospital bed to steady himself.

“Look, we don’t have to do anything. I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable here. I just want--”

“I know what you want.” Matt found his bearings and walked towards Bucky, stepping into the other man’s space, feeling his heat. “I know what you want, and I want it too.”

“I know you do, darling. Trust me. I may not have your enhanced senses, but I’m pretty good at reading people myself.” Bucky pressed his lips against Matt’s, slow and long and hot. A flicker of a tongue danced across Matt’s lower lip.

It was Matt who broke the kiss. “Not here, though. Like the man said, we’re being watched." 

“What, exhibitionism isn’t your kink? You don’t like it when people watch?”

“Not really. Figure why should I give what I’m never going to get in return.”

As they moved into the hall, Matt placed his hand just above Bucky’s right elbow. Bucky looked at it, then laid his left hand gently over the top. “I thought you could just tell where stuff was. With your bat senses or whatever.”

“It’s nothing like a bat,” Matt said. He gave one of Bucky’s fingers a small squeeze. “Can you feel that?”

“Yeah. It’s a lot more sensitive than the old one. I’m still getting used to it, really. I basically only wear it for Avenger’s business.”

“And for passing out next to your boyfriend in the hospital.”

“Oh, so you’re my boyfriend now?”

“Do you want me to be?”

Bucky paused and looked at Matt, then gave a wry smile and started walking again. “What do your bat senses tell you?”

Matt laughed. “Ok, sure, I could be navigating these hallways all on my own, but that’s work and this place is really loud. I don’t even want to ask what’s going on in the basement. Plus I’m pretty sure I’m still concussed. I’m supposed to be taking it easy. This is the equivalent of me keeping my eyes closed.”

“Whatever you say, counselor.” Bucky guided Matt onto a large elevator. He pushed a button, and the elevator began to move. 

“Do you live here?” Matt asked after a moment’s pause. “Where even are we right now?”

“We’re about 90 miles north of the city at the main Avengers compound, and yeah, this is where I’m staying at the moment. It’s not home, but it’ll do.” The elevator slowed to a stop and the doors slid open. Bucky held out his arm and Matt clasped it again, and then the two men started to walk. 

“Where is home?”

“Hmm?”

“You said you’re staying here, but this isn’t home. Where is home?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Brooklyn, I guess? Wakanda sometimes? It’s been a long time. And you? I know Daredevil likes to micromanage the shit out of Hell’s Kitchen. Is that where Mathew Michael Murdock is from, too?” They stopped in front of a door, and Bucky placed his hand against the wall. Underneath, Matt could feel the warmth of whatever device was scanning Bucky’s hand.

“Lived there my entire life, except when I was at Columbia.”

“Columbia Law School. Impressive. I think I assassinated a diplomat who graduated from there once.”

Matt froze. “You’re not lying.”

“No, I’m not,” Bucky said, guiding Matt to sit down on a minimalist but comfortable leather sofa. “I did some research while you were in the hospital, before I passed out. Daredevil’s got a reputation: you’re tough as nails but you don’t kill anyone. You’re a good person, Matt. It’s important to me that you know who I am - that you know what you’re getting yourself into. I’ve killed people. I’ve killed a lot of people.”

“When you were brainwashed--”

“And before. And after. I killed people when I was at war, and I’ve killed people working with the Avengers. I’m not proud of that fact, but I’m not ashamed of it either. And it will happen again.I need to know that you’re ok with that.”

Matt turned to face Bucky on the couch, pressing their knees together. He took both of Bucky’s hands in his own. “I almost killed someone once. His name was Wilson Fisk, and he seemed unstoppable. He had his hands everywhere - the police, the FBI, the district attorney's office. He’d even blackmailed my partner’s parents to try to keep us from fighting him that way.”

“He knew who you were?”

“He figured it out eventually. But no, at that point all he knew was that Matt Murdock and Daredevil were making problems for him, independently of each other. Anyway, I went to his home to kill him. I fully intended to kill him. I didn’t see any other way. But in the end I didn’t, because I knew that killing him would change me for the worse, and I refused to let him take that from me.”

Bucky opened his mouth to speak, and Matt held up a hand to stop him.

“I’m not saying that my way is the only way, or even that it’s the right way. I’m saying the opposite, actually. This was one man - one well connected, shady businessman - and I struggled to find another way. I can’t imagine what you’re up against, facing evil scientists and tyrannical despots with entire countries and armies and enhanced powers at their disposal. What I choose to do - or not do - is between me and God, and your choices are your own. I respect you, and I respect that you need to make hard choices. If you were out there killing because you thought it was fun, then yeah… maybe we’d have some problems. But this isn’t that, and knowing who you are doesn’t make me want to be with you any less.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Matt leaned forward. His right thumb brushed against Bucky’s lips then dragged down over Bucky’s chin. Gently, he cupped Bucky’s jaw and drew their mouths together.

The heat of the kiss burned through Matt - the passion of months of searching, of missing, of wondering and hoping and remembering. He tangled one hand in Bucky’s hair while fumbling with the other, trying to touch as much as he could while they sat awkwardly next to each other on the couch. Bucky’s shoulders, his arm, his back and chest and sides. Each new touch was like a revelation and Matt tried to drink in as much as he could as his sensitive fingers danced over Bucky’s body. It wasn’t enough. It couldn’t be enough, until…

“Get up here.” Bucky growled as he wrapped an arm around Matt’s waist and lifted him - like he weighed nothing - into his lap.

Matt gasped.

“Yeah, I told you I was strong, remember? Got me some of that super soldier serum everyone was always acting like Stevie was so special for having.”

Matt didn’t answer. He buried his face in the crook of Bucky’s neck and just felt the man around him - his warmth, his strength, the pulse of his heartbeat, his hands working their way under Matt’s shirt. 

“Bet you like that, huh sweetheart? It’s not everyday that someone can toss someone like you around. You want that? You need that? I remember you said you like it when it hurts a little.”

Matt nodded wordlessly, breathing in the smell of Bucky’s skin.

“Yeah you do. I’ve got you, baby.” Bucky tightened his grip around Matt’s waist and stood, taking Matt with him, lifting him with one arm. Matt wrapped his legs around Bucky’s waist and allowed himself to be carried into the bedroom. “There we go.” Bucky laid Matt down on the bed then crawled up over his body until they were face to face. He lifted up Matt’s torso just enough to ease off his shirt, then lowered him back down. Bucky’s comforter was cool against Matt’s back - not as smooth as his own, but high quality enough to be pleasant, and Bucky’s body was warm above him as he sat up enough to remove his own shirt. “Do you want this? Because I really, really want this.” 

“Yeah,” Matt agreed, his hands already reaching up to slide against the skin of Bucky’s chest and back. “Yes, please.” He paused, fingers hovering over Bucky’s back shoulder. “Is this ok? You said you didn’t like people looking at your scars. Can I…”

“Please,” Bucky gasped out, and Matt began to work his fingers over the skin there, too. “You feel so good. Want you to touch all of me.”

“Fuck, yes. I want that too, James… Bucky. Been dreaming about what you might feel like.” Matt pushed on Bucky’s shoulder slightly, and Bucky rolled them over so Matt was on top, his legs straddling Bucky’s hips. Bucky was hard beneath him, and Matt couldn’t help but grind down slightly, just to hear the soft whimper that escaped from Bucky’s lips before kissing it away. He kissed down Bucky’s neck and across his chest, drawing each of Bucky’s nipples into his mouth before continuing down, over Bucky’s firm stomach until his lips reached the top of Bucky’s pants. 

“Yes.” Bucky’s words were little more than a whisper, but Matt heard him just fine. He tucked his fingers into the waistband, and slid the soft sweatpants down Bucky’s legs and off his feet. He kissed his way back up Bucky’s body, paying special attention to Bucky’s thick thighs, shivering at the thought of them surrounding his head. Matt had spent many a drunken night telling Foggy how he wanted someone - sometimes Elektra, sometimes some random man or woman at Josie’s - to crush his head with their thighs and here, finally, was someone who could actually do it. He blew a warm puff of breath across the tip of Bucky’s cock, and smiled as he felt the man below him tremble. Slowly, precisely, he licked a ring around the head, then pursed his lips over his teeth, relaxed his throat, and took Bucky down to the root in a single swallow.

“Jesus fucking christ, holy shit!” Bucky shouted, unable to keep his hips from jerking up, pushing his cock deeper into Matt’s throat. 

Matt fought back the urge to choke and hummed slightly. He placed a hand on Bucky’s hip, guiding it back down. He wasn’t strong enough to hold Bucky there by any means, but he tightened his grip as a reminder. 

“Sorry. Sorry.” Bucky lifted his head slightly and groaned as Matt began to work him with his lips and tongue, sliding his mouth up and down Bucky’s length, hollowing his cheeks and finding all the spots that made Bucky squirm. “Fuck. You’re really good at that.” 

Matt pulled off with a noisy pop. He licked his lips. “You know what they say about lawyers? We’re good with our mouths.” He grinned, then took Bucky into his mouth again, one hand supporting himself, the other touching as much of Bucky’s skin as it could reach. 

Bucky’s hand found its way to Matt’s head, fingers tangling themselves in Matt’s hair, scratching gently at his scalp. “Baby. Oh, oh fuck Matt. Please? Can I… Serum means I’m clean and I can’t catch anything. I… I can go again. Goddamnit baby, your mouth…”

Matt didn’t stop to answer, but he pulsed his fingers against Bucky’s hip in a way he hoped would be read as an enthusiastic  _ yes  _ as he redoubled his efforts, giving all he had, listening and feeling for the signs that Bucky was close: the sharp intake of breath, muscles tensing, blood pressure rising. When he could tell that Bucky couldn’t take a second more, he took him as deep as he could, pressing his nose against Bucky’s pubic hair and breathing deeply. He swallowed hard, feeling his pharyngeal muscles contract against Bucky’s cock, and held tight as Bucky came with a shout and spilled down his throat. 

Matt held Bucky in his mouth a few moments longer than necessary, just to feel the other man twitch and squirm as he grew oversensitive, then released him with a soft sigh. 

“Fuck,” Bucky murmured, and Matt felt the vibrations of his head hitting the pillow. “Fuck.”

“You’re welcome,” Matt said with a grin, kissing Bucky’s inner thigh and then crawling up to flop against his chest. “Although, I seem to remember someone promising me a good throwing around.”

“Just give me a second, will’ya?” Bucky poked Matt playfully in the side. “Somebody just sucked my brains out through my dick. I need a minute to recover.” 

Matt smiled against Bucky’s skin. “I don’t know. Maybe the Winter Soldier isn’t quite as intimidating as I’d been led to believe.”

He was on his back with his arms pinned over his head before he even recognized that they were moving. 

“You wanna say that again,” Bucky growled, inches from Matt’s face, his voice low and hard, and oozing with danger.

Matt’s body reacted instinctively - part of him ready to fight, part of him ready to fuck. His brain always had trouble distinguishing between the two. He tried to move his arms, to fight back against the vibranium hand clamped around his wrists, but it was obviously futile. 

“Is this what you need? Need me to show you that I could take you down, sweetheart?” Bucky manhandled Matt’s body into position, moving his arms so that his head rolled to the side, exposing his neck. Bucky kissed him first, then scraped his teeth across the sensitive skin. “You were passed out, hurt, and the doctors said you were fine but I was worried.” Bucky spoke between kisses and small nips, sucking small bruises into the skin on Matt’s neck and chest, all the while holding Matt’s arms taught with one hand. “So I asked FRIDAY to show me some footage of Daredevil. What do you think she showed me, Matt?”

Bucky bit down on Matt’s nipple, and Matt arched his back, groaning in reply. 

“She showed me you, in your red spandex, getting your ass kicked up and down Hell’s Kitchen.”

“It’s not spandex!” Matt managed to gasp out before Bucky clamped down on his other nipple, causing Matt to shout out.

“James! Bucky! Fuck. Please. Please fuck me. Please!”

“Sweetheart.” Bucky’s voice was suddenly sickeningly sweet. “I didn’t leave the apartment expecting to have you in my bed tonight. I need to go to my closet and get some things, which means letting go of your arms. One of two things can happen here: either you tell me that you’re going to be my very good boy and stay perfectly still for me, or I can use that shirt I loaned you to tie you to the headboard. It’s your choice.”

Matt’s eyes went wide. “I… I can be good?”

“You don’t sound too confident about that, doll.”

“I can be good,” Matt repeated, with a bit more determination.

“I know you can.” Bucky kissed Matt’s lips softly before releasing his wrists and rising to stand. “Because I don’t think either of us wants to think about what will happen if you don’t.

Something in Matt’s face must have brightened, and Bucky chuckled softly. “Oh no, Matty. Nothing like that. I’m onto you already. You can tell when I’m lying, so I know you’ll believe me when I say that I can think of plenty of ways to punish you that don’t involve lying a single finger on you.”

Matt could feel himself blush all over as Bucky released his hands, then entered his large, walk-in closet and exited with a bottle of lube and a condom. 

In a single, fluid motion, Bucky peeled off Matt’s pants and knelt between his legs. He bracketed Matt’s head with his arms, then leaned forward and kissed Matt’s lips gently. “I barely got to have you before I got pulled away. I still can’t believe I’m getting a second chance.”

Still holding his own hands tightly above his head, Matt surged up and pressed his lips against Bucky’s. “You’re sweet. Please shut up and fuck me now.” 

Bucky laughed and pressed Matt back into the bed. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re sort of an asshole?”

“My law partner, pretty much every daaAAAHHH!” Matt screamed out as Bucky pushed a smooth, heavily lubed, vibranium finger past his tight rim. 

“So, extra sensitive sense of touch, huh?” Bucky slowly worked his finger in deeper as he spoke. It felt cool and solid, nothing like flesh, but not quite like lifeless metal either. It hummed slightly, resonating at its own unique frequency. Matt could feel each groove, each point of articulation that allowed Bucky full range of movement, as Bucky carved out space for himself inside Matt’s body. 

Matt gasped as Bucky pulled out slightly, just to push a second finger alongside the first. His muscles strained against the flesh hand still easily holding his arms in place over his head, his toes curled, his hands clenched into fists, and his back arched as Bucky curled his fingers and brushed vibranium against Matt’s prostate. 

“God, sweetheart. Just look at you.”

Matt could barely hear Bucky over the ringing in his own ears. His body was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. He willed his muscles to relax, to let more of Bucky in, to take him completely. 

“There you go. Just like that. So good for me.” Bucky murmured words of praise as he worked his fingers in and out of Matt’s body. “I’ve got you, baby. Think you’re ready for one more?”

“Don’t need it.” Matt managed to get the words out of his mouth. His lungs were burning, every muscle in his body feeling like it was on fire, sensation and pleasure radiating outwards from where Bucky was slowly taking him apart from the inside out. “I… fuck!” Bucky pressed his fingers into Matt’s prostate, holding them steady while Matt squirmed beneath him. 

“You what, baby?”

Matt opened his mouth, but nothing came out except a sob as Bucky slid a third finger alongside the first two. 

“What do you want, Matt? What do you need?”

Matt shook his head against the bed beneath him. Bucky’s heartbeat was steady. His body was hot and his skin smelled like sweat and almonds. He crooked his fingers again. Matt keened.

“Alright, sweetheart. It’s alright. I’ve got you.” Bucky slid out his fingers and Matt clenched down around the emptiness before he felt the head of Bucky’s cock pushing up against him. The latex of the condom was cool. It wasn’t smooth like most people thought, but slightly pitted and dimpled, rubbing against him pleasantly as Bucky slowly slid home, the stretch pleasant and warm, and Matt allowed himself to give in completely to the pleasure. 

“Fuck. I gotta move now. You alright, baby? You ready?”

Matt nodded, even as Bucky’s voice seemed like it was coming from far away. His body was enveloped in sensation, in the bliss of Bucky over him and around him and inside of him. 

Bucky started slowly at first, and it was good. Familiar. No, he hadn’t felt it the same, but this was his Bucky, his  _ James,  _ the man he’d remembered and dreamed about for the past eight months. Matt could practically see Bucky above him, images in his mind fuzzy but still there. The curl of Bucky’s hair, the grey of his eyes, the way he bit at his lower lip when the feeling started to overwhelm him. Matt gently tugged his own hand free of Bucky’s grasp, and Bucky didn’t fight him. He ran that hand across Bucky’s cheekbone and through his hair, reminding himself of the curve of Bucky’s jaw, the smoothness of his skin. 

“Sweetheart, I…” Bucky’s voice sounded choked. His heart was pounding, his breath coming ragged. “Matt. Fuck, you’re so strong. I don’t want to hurt you. Can I… Can you take more?”

Matt wanted to scream  _ Yes! _ He wanted to tell Bucky that he could take anything, that he liked when it hurt, that he needed it. But his mouth wouldn’t let any of those words out. When he tried to speak, all that came out was a low, breathy moan. So instead he wrapped his legs around Bucky’s thighs and pulled him even closer, nodding his head frantically.

“Fuck, you’re perfect. God.” 

Matt made a soft choking noise as Bucky pulled almost all the way out and thrust back in, harder this time, then again harder still. 

“You like that? You look so fucking good right now. I could stare down at you like this forever.”

Both of Matt’s hands were free now, and he used them to brace himself against the headboard as Bucky drove into him. The fire was back, burning through his body, and there was nothing he could do - nothing he wanted to do but lie there and take it. He tried to hold on with his legs, tried to lift his hips to meet Bucky’s thrusts, but in the end Bucky was enhanced and Matt was just a man, and so he surrendered to it. 

He could feel the start of his orgasm beginning to build when Bucky slowed. Matt whimpered as Bucky’s movements stilled. 

“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” Bucky kissed Matt’s nose. “I’m not done with you. You just look so good and I want to admire you properly. He lifted himself up slightly on his right arm, then wrapped the left around Matt’s waist. In one fluid motion, and without seeming to exert any effort at all, Bucky pulled out, then shifted them so that he was lying flat on the bed with Matt straddling him. His hands moved across Matt’s body, and Matt couldn’t help but shiver at the sensation as one warm flesh hand and one cool metal hand settled on his hips.

“I told you I wanted you on top of me. Guess I’m just not ready to take the chance of missing out on it a second time. Now just so we’re clear,” Bucky’s voice was smooth and calm. “I’m not asking you to do any work here. I just want a better angle to enjoy the show.”

Matt frowned down at him. “It’s not like I’m going to just sit here and do nothi…” The breath was practically knocked out of him as Bucky moved him easily, his fingertips pressing into Matt’s skin in a way he knew would leave five tiny bruises on both sides. Bucky raised him up easily then lowered him, slowly, smoothly, onto his cock. 

“What were you saying, sweetheart?”

Matt took a deep, shaky breath, his eyes wide.

“That’s what I thought. Now hold on, baby. I’ve got you.” 

And just like that he was moving again as Bucky worked him up and down, like he weighed nothing, like he was a rag doll. Behind his back, Matt felt Bucky lift up his own knees so his feet were flat on the bed. Matt wrapped his hands around Bucky’s thighs for support. He liked it rough - had been with people who liked it rough before - but this wasn’t that. Bucky’s hands on his waist were enough to hold him, to move him, but nothing more. He wasn’t being forced. Wasn’t being jerked around. He felt weightless and cared for and supported and like nothing he’d ever felt before. Most of all he felt good. He felt so fucking good. 

Bucky was talking practically nonstop, a litany of praise and filth that Matt could only let wash over him. He was too far gone to focus on individual words, and it was only thanks to a change in tone that he heard Bucky when he said: 

“Touch yourself.”

Something must have shown in Matt’s face - a look of panic or fear - because Bucky's tone immediately softened again. He ran his flesh thumb comfortingly over Matt’s hipbone. 

“Hush, baby. I’m not going to let you fall. I’ve got you. You’re safe. Let go. Trust me.”

Tentatively, Matt lifted one hand off of Bucky’s knee. Bucky’s grip tightened ever so slightly, probably so slightly that anyone but Matt wouldn’t even notice. He let out a small sigh, too, just as slight. The thumb on Matt’s hipbone continued to stroke gently.

“You’re gorgeous.”

Matt could feel his own skin getting hot. He could feel the twitch of Bucky’s smile; he remembered how predatory it looked - the flash of white of Bucky’s teeth. 

“Now touch yourself, baby. I want to feel you come on my cock.”

Matt let his head fall back - couldn’t have stopped himself if he wanted to - as he reached down and wrapped his hand around his own dick. He was so close already. So fucking close. And Bucky’s hands were tight on his hips, fingers splayed wide onto his back, holding him, moving him, manhandling him exactly where Bucky wanted him. Bucky was inside of him and Matt was completely at his mercy. 

There was nothing to do but give in.

And he did. He gasped out Bucky’s name as he came, wanting to fall forwards, hands holding him easily in place as Bucky thrust into him until he came too, and Matt could feel his warmth filling the condom. 

Then he was moving as Bucky pulled him forward, arranging Matt in the crook of his arm, head resting on his shoulder. Matt could feel the scarred flesh under his cheek, he could hear the pounding of Bucky’s heart as they lay there, Bucky running his fingers through Matt’s hair.

“You did good, sweetheart. You’re so good. I can’t believe I found you.”

Matt smiled against Bucky’s skin, tried to find words, gave up. He reached out and found Bucky’s hand, lifted it up to his lips, and kissed his fingertips gently.

“Just relax, baby. I’ve got you. You can rest.”

Matt wanted to argue. He was fine and he didn’t need to rest. Bucky’s arms were warm around him and his voice was low and soothing. Before Matt could open his mouth to try again to speak, he was asleep. 


	9. Nine

Sometimes, when Matt woke up in a new place, it took him a moment to remember where he was. Sounds were different and muffled when he was still half asleep. It was hard to gauge the air currents in a room when he was bundled under piles of blankets. Bedding itself trapped smells, emphasizing those who had been there recently and overpowering everything else. It could be disconcerting, a moment of panic, of confusion, when he wasn’t quite sure where he was or who was there with him.

This was not one of those times.

Bucky was still next to him, sitting up in bed, his hip pressed up against Matt’s shoulder. His flesh hand was carding gently through Matt’s hair. His vibranium hand held a book. It was old; its pages were dry and flaky. They smelled like someone had tried to clean them recently, to restore them, to protect them, but the old smells still lingered. Food and damp apartments, dirt and campfires, sweat and blood. The book smelled like Bucky, and it smelled like other people too.

“What are you reading?” Matt asked without moving.

“ _ Men Like Gods _ , by H.G. Wells,” Bucky didn’t take his eyes off the page. “I’ve probably read it a hundred times. Took it with me to the front lines. I didn’t have it with me when I fell and somebody put it in Stevie’s Smithsonian exhibit. I um… liberated it.” He smiled and turned his head to look down at Matt. “Don’t suppose you know any good lawyers who could help me out if anyone ever figured that out?”

Matt grinned. “Depends on whether or not you were ever legally declared dead. If you were never legally declared dead, then you have a right to take everything that’s yours out of any museum you want. But… I don’t know, maybe ask first next time? There’s a process.”

“Forms, I bet.”

“Lots of forms.”

“Hmmm… sounds like work. I’ll just trick a cute lawyer into doing it for me.”

“Is that so?” Matt pushed himself up to sitting and pressed a kiss against Bucky’s lips. “There’s no need to trick him, though. All you have to do is ask. Honesty is always the best policy.”

He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment the words were out of his mouth, and the skip in Bucky’s heartbeat just confirmed that fact.

“Matt… I know I should have…”

“Hey.” Matt interrupted. “I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t thinking. I lied too, remember? Nobody said who they really were. There were reasons...”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same. I should have told you what was going on. You deserved to know.”

Matt thought about it for a moment. “You could tell me now? Unless you can’t, I mean. If it’s still classified…”

“No. No, I mean… It was never really  _ classified _ , technically. There wasn’t any time for that. It was just… We didn’t know. Sam and I, we never really knew what was happening. One moment we were fighting Thanos in Wakanda, then I was watching my own hands disintegrate, and then Sam and I woke up in… well… you know that part. We were there for maybe half an hour when you showed up, and then the house appeared, and then the rest. We didn’t know who you were or what had happened. For all we knew, the fight was still going on and we were being kept from it. My arm was healed, and Sam…” Matt could feel Bucky chewing on his lower lip. “Sam lost someone, a long time ago. Someone very close to him. That place… it took away the memories, not just of the loss, but of the love too. He was confused. I wanted to be fighting. We didn’t know if we could trust you. But none of that changes the fact that we should have trusted you; that if we would have trusted you, maybe we all could have figured something out together.”

Matt frowned. “There’s no reason to think that’s true. It’s not like I would have come up to a solution to all that. Where even were we? Has anyone else said anything similar happened to them?”

Bucky shook his head,  _ no.  _ “As far as anyone can tell, we’re the only three who didn’t just blip out and then blip back into existence again. For everyone else, it was like no time passed.”

“Well, not no time exactly,” Matt said flippantly, his mind moving on to a list of possible scenarios. “So you were fighting, and was Sa…”

“What do you mean ‘not no time’?” Bucky interrupted, sitting up in bed.

“What?”

“Tell me what happened to you, exactly.”

“From when?” 

“The beginning.”

Matt sat for a moment, then started carefully. “I was at the courthouse. I could hear… at the time I didn’t know what it was. It was terrible. I know now it was people turning to dust. I tried to do something - to help - but then I disintegrated too. And then… there was nothingness. I’m not sure how long it lasted. I wasn’t aware that anything was wrong, per say, but I was aware that things had been different. It’s hard to explain, but you know what I mean, right? And then I woke up and you and Sam were there and it was bright. And you know the rest.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Bucky shifted in the bed and clasped both of Matt’s hands. “Nobody has described anything like that before. The nothingness. The awareness. That is something new. I think…” He bit at his lower lip. “I think we need to get you to Strange.”

***

In a day of surreal experiences, this was probably the most surreal. Matt was sitting at a conference table at Avengers Headquarters. The chairs were the softest leather he had ever felt. The table was so polished that every sound reflected off of it almost perfectly. 

Steve Rogers was sitting at the head of the table. Matt could feel how strong the man was, even now that he was old. He’d introduced himself as Commander Rogers, and Matt couldn’t deny that the title fit him. Bucky had taken a seat at Rogers’s left, and beckoned Matt to sit next to him. Rhodey and Scott were sitting at the table, along with a man Matt didn’t recognize who was introduced as Peter Quill. The Wasp was there - Matt learned her real name was Hope, and she was seated next to another woman whom Matt was desperately trying to block out of his senses. She was introduced as Carol, and she most definitely was not human. Clint was there, leaning against the back wall, and Peter was pacing over-excitedly. 

“Are we ready to get started?”

Matt jumped at the voice, which seemed to come out of nowhere. A man was suddenly standing next to Commander Rogers and, as far as Matt could tell he hadn’t been there before. 

“Good of you to join us, Strange,” Rogers said to the new man. “I see you haven’t lost your flair for the dramatic.” 

Strange didn’t respond, and Matt could practically feel his eyes narrow down onto where he was sitting. “So, you’re Daredevil.”

Matt smiled back politely. 

“I’ve been told what you said, but I’d like to hear it again from you. Tell me what you experienced, in between.”

Matt told the story again, from the point where he turned to dust to the point when he appeared… wherever they had been. As he talked, Strange paced around him, his cape flowing behind him and Peter struggling to stay out of his way. Matt got the impression that he wasn’t even really listening to what was being said, that he was assessing something else about Matt all together.

“How long have you been blind?” Strange interrupted when Matt was almost done talking.

“Since I was eight.” 

“And your other senses are amplified. Anything else? Any other powers?”

“Not really. The way I process the information... It’s almost like radar. It all comes together to form a picture in my minds-eye. I’m not sure if that’s a power or just a function of how my brain interprets what it’s getting from my senses.”

Strange hummed. “What about healing abilities?”

“I don’t have any.”

“No, that’s not right.” Strange walked over and laid a few pieces of paper on the table in front of Matt. 

Bucky snorted, and pulled the papers in front of himself. “He can’t see these, you know.”

“Right. Right of course.” Strange continued, seeming completely unbothered. “I’ve looked at your brain scans, Mr. Murdock. Your injuries from Doom were substantial. You healed much more quickly than you should have.”

“Oh. Right. Well, my mentor, Stick, he taught me how to heal myself through meditation.”

Matt could feel Strange’s eyebrows raise. “Stick?”

“Yeah. After my father was killed, he took me in for a while. Tried to train me to join the Chaste. They’re a group devoted to destroying the--”

“I know who the Chaste is,” Strange interrupted, his voice sounding unimpressed. “They work with the Iron Fist. Their power is mystical, although they don’t use it to its full potential.” 

“I didn’t learn any of that,” Matt said with a slight laugh. “Just the meditation and some fighting skills. He wanted me to be a soldier… but we both decided it wasn’t a good fit.”

Strange smiled, but it was a cold smile. “If you learned the meditation, then you learned how to control mystical powers - whether you want to admit it or not.” He sighed, then began to pace again. “You need to understand that nothing like this happened to anyone else. When the Hulk undid Thanos’s snap, Mr. Barnes and Mr. Wilson did not return. When I searched for them on the astral plane, I discovered that they were inside the reality stone. I came and I released them, and once the battle was over I released you and sent you back in time to the moment you should have appeared along with everyone else. I still don’t know why they were sent there, but I’m starting to realize why you were.”

“Me… I…”

“You were in a unique position, Mr. Murdock. You don’t perceive things the way most people do, and you’re knowledgeable in the mystic arts.” Strange held up a hand to stop Matt, who had begun to protest. “You might not be skillful, but you have a baseline knowledge of them.”

Matt frowned. 

“This, combined with the fact that you were aware of the passage of time after the snap took place leads me to hypothesize that something in you was fighting what was happening. I think that the stones realized this and captured you, isolating you inside the reality stone where you could be contained.”

Matt was speechless. The rest of the room was silent as well. 

It was Commander Rogers who finally broke the silence. “But what about Bucky? And Sam? If Matt was the threat, how did they end up there too?”

“I’m not sure,” Strange admitted, and Matt could hear that it pained him to do so.

Next to him, Bucky swallowed hard. “I think I might have an idea for that one.”

“Please, enlighten us,” Strange said with a slight smirk. Matt kind of wanted to hit him. 

He got the impression that Bucky did too, because he settled back into his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and scowling. 

“Go on, Buck,” Steve prompted gently. 

Bucky’s frown deepened, but he took a deep breath and began to speak. “Matt, you said over and over that you felt like the house was trying to keep you there. To trap you.”

“Yeah, but I was depressed. I didn’t mean…”

“Ok but what if you were right,” Bucky continued. “Like Strange says, maybe you were sensing things the rest of us weren’t. What if it was trying to keep you there. What would you have done if you had been in that house all by yourself?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“You might have tried to fight. To try and get out?”

“I mean it’s possible.” Matt tried to think about it. He hadn’t given much consideration to trying to escape, but Bucky and Sam had seemed so confident in their assessment that there was nowhere to go. Would Matt have tried harder if he hadn’t believed what he was being told? If he hadn’t been told it in the first place? “I guess it is possible,” he repeated. “I had considered taking off a few times, not to escape exactly. Just to walk until I…” 

Next to him, Bucky swallowed hard. He reached out under the table and placed his left hand protectively over Matt’s thigh. “I think I was put there to keep Matt there,” Bucky said plainly to the table. “And that Sam was put there to help keep me sane.”

Sam snorted. “Not my job, man.”

“It would have been weird if it was just the two of us,” Bucky said, turning to Sam. “And I know you and Matt connected too, obviously not in the same way. There aren’t a lot of people I feel comfortable talking to besides you and Steve…”

“Ok but why you?” Steve asked. “I understand sending Sam to be with you; the two of you at least know each other. But why you for Matt? I didn’t think you’d ever met before?”

“We hadn’t,” Bucky agreed.

“So why then?” Steve continued. “Assuming you’re all right and this was some sort of containment cell for Mr. Murdock, why would the stone pick you to keep him there?”

“I think it knew I would fall in love with him, and I would do anything to keep him there and happy with me.”

Matt’s mouth fell open in surprise. He heard a few gasps in the room and one  _ Awwwww  _ from Peter. Bucky's heart rate was steady. He wasn’t lying. “You’re in love with me?”

“I’m so sorry, Matt. This isn’t… I shouldn’t tell you like this. I know that. It’s too soon and too public but… yeah. I have been for a long time now. The way you move. The way you think. The way you always fight even though it clearly hurts and a big part of you is telling you to give up.”

Matt’s own heart pounding in his chest drove out the rest of the sounds in the room.

“Listen,” Bucky continued “Let's move on, ok? That’s the reason and that’s all that matters right now. I don’t expect you to say it back. You were so out of it for so long in that house - there hasn’t been time for you to fall in love with me and I get that. Strange, is that enough of a reason for you?”

Dr. Strange seemed to be momentarily at a loss for words. When he spoke again, his voice sounded almost as confident as before, but Matt could plainly hear the strain behind it. “Yeah, actually. Yes. It makes sense.”

“Mr. Murdock --”

And  _ oh fuck  _ did Carol hurt. When Matt was actively holding her out of his mind, she still burned bright and hot at the edges of his senses. When he focused directly on her? It was like sitting six feet away from the sun. Power radiated off of her in pulses. It leapt from her fingers in small flairs that licked at the table and chairs. Matt wasn’t quite sure how the room wasn’t bursting into flames, just from her sitting inside of it.

“--With your permission, I think it would be beneficial if we did some tests to find out…”

“Absolutely not,” Bucky interrupted. 

“Excuse me?” Carol sounded incredulous. 

“He’s not a science experiment. He’s not a lab rat. You can’t just experiment on him because he’s different.” The hand on Matt’s thigh tightened slightly.

Carol sighed. “Mr. Barnes, I know that you and I have not spoken much, but I am aware of your history. If you were aware of mine, you would know that I would never suggest such a thing. Nobody - in this room or otherwise - is a lab rat. However, if there is something within Mr. Murdock’s abilities that allows him to subconsciously recognize metaphysical attacks, then that’s useful to know and we should help him find a way to recognize it.” 

Matt placed a hand comfortingly over Bucky’s. “It’s alright. I’ll help however I can.”

“Baby, you don’t have to. They can’t make you…”

“I know.” Matt turned so he was facing Bucky slightly, allowing the other man to clearly see his facial expressions. “But she’s right. If I can do something to help and I don’t even know it, I owe it to everyone to at least try and find out. And you’ll be with me. I know you’ll give them hell if they try to go too far.”

“I will,” Bucky practically growled.

“Then it’s decided,” Strange said cheerfully. “I’ll be in contact with a time that fits my schedule.” Strange made a swirling motion with his hands, took a step forward, and disappeared.

“What the fuck…” Matt muttered quietly. 

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “That guy is the worst.”

There was a bit more conversation amongst the group, but none of it concerned Matt so he zoned it out. Bucky was in love with him.  _ Bucky was in love with him.  _ It was a lot to take in. But the more he thought about it, the less it scared him.  _ Bucky was in love with him.  _ Bucky had protected him. He had stood up for him. In the house, he had pulled Matt out of a depression that had been spiraling out of control... 

_ Was he in love with Bucky? _

He wasn’t sure, honestly. It had been a long time since he’d let himself feel anything even close to love. Not that kind of love, anyway. He loved Foggy, but that was different. And he knew that even that kind of love was risky. Love was a liability. It could get the person he loved hurt.

_ Bucky could take care of himself.  _

Matt listened to Bucky’s heartbeat, strong and steady and comforting. He smelled the scents that he’d already come to associate with Bucky: vanilla and leather and the steel of his knives. The combination was relaxing. The vibranium hand on Matt’s thigh had warmed until it was identical to his own body temperature. It hummed pleasantly. It felt soothing and safe. 

_ Bucky loved him. Did he love Bucky? _

He had passed out in Bucky’s arms, felt safe in Bucky’s bed…

Around him, the meeting came to a close. People started to stand and leave. 

“Are you ready?” Bucky asked. “Is there anyone you want to talk to? Any questions you have?”

“No. I’m good.” Matt stood and took the arm that Bucky offered him, allowing himself to be guided into the hallway and away from the conference room. 

_ Did he love Bucky? _

Matt smiled. He wasn’t sure yet, but he was definitely willing to find out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for going on this journey with me! Let me know what you think!!! And please be sure to go and admire/leave kudos for the amazing art that inspired it :)


End file.
